We need action on the ground, not high-flying abstractions

As Maria noted in her last entry, she believes the social dialogue in Argentina is heading the wrong way – and it seems that every country faces such points in its development. As I look back on my university years, I agree with her.

Sometimes there is too much talking and not enough real action (I don’t just mean the educational sphere only; it can be noticed in all of Russian economic or political life). With all due respect to the talented and brilliant professors and teachers of previous generations who helped several Russian geniuses (mathematician Grigori Perelman, for example) to reveal their potential, I would like to see changes in educational life. What’s quite interesting is that many of my fellow students feel the same; the demand for a new model is in the air. At the same time, those in charge of social institutions are a bit puzzled about the future – as a result, society moves both forward and backward. It reminds me of a fable where three animals have to make enormous efforts to move a carriage, but the carriage remains stuck in one place because they couldn’t come to an agreement.

Documents for senior year research in linguistics

What do I mean by “backward?” All of the red tape and bureaucracy is one example. It’s especially apparent when students prepare their final year research projects. But those pushing forward are stronger. It makes me glad to hear when people are doing things not for bureaucratic abstractions but for concrete goals, like when friends of mine say they are doing something for particular people (working as a tutor or launching their own projects, for example). That is a lot better than hearing they are working for abstract things like “customers” or “corporations.”

I hope the conference devoted to education – Global Media Forum, which is taking place in Germany this week and where my fellow bloggers are in attendance – will result in significant action (especially with the many participants from other continents in attendance). And I hope it will prompt people or small organizations working in education to promote learning and to encourage others to be not just another face in the crowd but to stand out with their own ideas and goals.

It’s like playing chess where you learn to think ahead in order not to lose. Once you adapt the strategy of chess to real life – you’ll benefit!

Two fellow activists and I worked at a stand for first-year students

Four years ago, I founded a local chapter of ArbeiterKind.de in Mainz, the city where I studied. The non-profit organization ArbeiterKind.de supports children whose parents didn’t attend university as they pursue college degrees. After I read an article about ArbeiterKind.de, I decided that I definitely had to support the organization for two reasons.

First, in the article Katja Urbatsch, the founder of ArbeiterKind.de, described the typical challenges for children of non-academic families after they finish high school. Many barriers seemed familiar to me: The insecurity about the value of studying certain subjects, like the humanities. A question I struggled with in the beginning was: Wouldn’t it be better to work and earn money immediately after high school? Later, the confusion arising from the task of writing initial academic papers was tough for me.
Statistics quoted in the article and those following in the years to come gave me even more motivation to support ArbeiterKind.de. Results of surveys show that children of parents who didn’t earn college degrees are far less likely to finish their Abitur (the German high school certificate allowing students to enroll in a university). Even those who receive their Abitur decide to study at universities less often than the children of parents with an academic background. Scholarship programs may even aggravate the situation. They support gifted students financially, with seminars and a strong network, and they are co-financed by the German state. But only 30 percent of the students receiving a scholarship from the biggest German foundations have parents without an Abitur. These are just average numbers. In some foundations, there are only 10 to 20 percent! It is just impossible that talent, thirst for knowledge, and intelligence are prevalent at such a higher degree among children of academics than among children of parents who didn’t earn degrees or who have no Abitur.

So, I became angry: Something was going wrong in our educational system. And I saw an opportunity to do something against this inequality by supporting ArbeiterKind.de.

Members of ArbeiterKind.de at a workshop

Many have found their very personal reasons for supporting our organization. ArbeiterKind.de has grown to more than 4,000 members. Moreover, ArbeiterKind.at was founded in Austria last year. To enable high school students to really decide about whether they want to study or not, we give them as much information as possible. Studying is no matter of course for children who are first generation college students in their families. They must justify why they want to study – just as kids of academics have to justify why they don’t want to study if they diverge from their family’s academic tradition.

My friends from ArbeiterKind.de and I go to schools and make presentations about the different possibilities for earning a college degree and financing one’s studies. I also post tips on Facebook daily. Moreover, we participate in fairs and events on education. Last but not least, we offer an online network where we answer questions and give information.

Many people put their minds to ease by pointing out that there aren’t any (or, in Bavaria and Lower Saxony, just low) tuition fees and that we have BaföG (student loans granted by the state). But this isn’t enough. Most importantly, BaföG can’t be regarded as a magic bullet. These loans don’t suffice to ensure equal chances in education. I will write more about BaföG and other support mechanisms at earlier stages in the German educational system in my next blog entry.

My friends and me - on different paths than our parents

Emmy wrote that people increasingly need to be better qualified to find jobs in Kenya. The situation in Kenya is different from that in Germany, of course. But here we young people also need more and more qualifications to get a good job – and many of us actually have these credentials. I talked with my girlfriends about how our educational training and our lives as a whole have changed compared with our parents’. We have been friends for years. Some of us even went to the same kindergarten, so we were educated in the German school system at the same time.
Five of us finished Gymnasium with an Abitur, a diploma that allowed us to study at a university afterwards. And two of my friends first finished at a Realschule and then did their Abitur at a Gymnasium specializing in economics (here I wrote more about the German school system). Afterwards, they finished vocational training. One of them now studies on the weekends alongside her job.

The majority of our parents, in contrast, didn’t study at university. Four of us are the first ones in their families to go on to college. But this is not the rule in Germany. If you take 100 children whose parents didn’t go to college, 24 will go on to university themselves. But when you look at 100 children of academics, statistics show that 71 of them will attend university.

But our academic degrees aren’t the only difference between our education and that of our parents. Six of us have studied abroad or worked while travelling in another country (Pavel wrote more here about gap years). No wonder that all of us speak English decently. That is a contrast to our parents: Most of them know only a little English. But, after all, they didn’t need it for being successful in their jobs anyway. Often our fathers earned enough money to support their families. Thus, our mothers didn’t have to work full time and could care for us children.

While we learn, live abroad, and make plans for our free time, our parents had very different worries at our age − particularly the ones who didn’t study. My father had already bought a house when he was my age. My mother had just had her second child; her first one − me − was already four years old. None of us seven friends bear that much responsibility. All of us are unmarried, and no one of has a child or a house.

Our generation has been taught to be flexible and mobile

After all, why should we plan on building a house? We, the young work force, are supposed to be flexible and willing to move. One of my friends, for instance, was told at the beginning of her training for becoming a teacher that, after finishing their training, the future teachers wouldn’t be able to choose where they work. The state would appoint them to schools they would be needed at. Whether they had a house in another city wouldn’t play a role. Of course, things aren’t very different when it comes to the private sector, but at least you can choose your employer more freely.

I don’t want to say that this is negative. We are enjoying these freedoms that have also been made possible by our parents. It is great to speak English fluently and to have lived in different places worldwide. At the same time, it’s amazing how much our way of planning our future has changed from that of our parents, how many more unknown variables we must deal with. While our parents thought already in their mid-20s that they would become old in the town they had been born in, some of us don’t even know what the five next years will bring.

Ultimately, I don’t think it’s just more qualifications that the job market demands – but also more flexibility.

Valeria at the integration center with a group of kids

After Barrio Mosconi, the circus workshop moved to El Dique, another slum in the district of Ensenada. Having set foot in both, I could tell the difference between them was that the latter has worse living conditions: informal housing and dirt roads instead of paved streets. Also, as Liliana put it very well during the meeting we had: El Dique has a bigger population, so it is able to have a Centro de Integración Comunitario. The proper translation would be “Community Integration Center,” and it is a special building provided by the government, where there is space for health initiatives as well as social development, arts, education and sports programs. This is where the circus classes took place.
I think it’s worth talking about these places and describe what they do. I often believe that I was able to get so far in a career and be so passionate about learning because, ever since I can recall, I was stimulated and challenged. Nothing was ever missing in my house, and that, I believe, is the starting point. When I first talked to the people working at the Centro Integrador, I understood their role in the kids’ life was giving them emotional support, challenging them and encouraging them to take up a profession.

Kids and teenagers who come from impoverished homes often lack not only dedication to school – they are also not encouraged to study and improve themselves. More often than not, their parents are uneducated and unemployed: a context that is born and reborn with every economic crisis. Why would they study, if they’ll never get out of this situation? I can understand this reasoning. It’s hard to make someone that is so cut down by this harsh reality, understand that things can change.

El Dique is a bleak place

This is why I value so much what they do at the integration center. I had a chance one day, when I was visiting with the circus team, to talk to Valeria, one of the coordinators of a program called El Envión (the title means “the shove, ” as when you give someone a little push so they can move forward). This program organizes different activities at the integration center. Valeria told me they try whatever seems catchier: Photography was very popular; the circus was a real hit; and painting was getting on super.

“We also give school support for subjects like foreign languages or math – or anything the kids need. You can tell they have a nice time here. Sometimes they say things like ‘I wanna miss school so I can come here all the time.’ But we tell them school is a must, and absence is not an option,” she said. “Here we give support and make a lot of activities to get them interested. The main aim is that they don’t drop out of school. When they finish secondary school, we sit together with them and a college guide and ask ‘What career will you pick?’”

I could hear the urgency and constant effort in her words.

I can tell that kids learn when they are motivated. When they find support, they can take a step forward. How do you make this happen when they stand alone, when there is no home, no conventional family? How does it work where you live?

Women can face particular hardship in getting an education in Kenya

Last week on one of the television stations there was a report about school children who have to travel 10 hours to attend one hour of school. Hard to believe in this day and age! It’s because there are no schools nearby, and the transport system in that remote part of the country is almost non-existent.

In reflecting on gender and education – I thought to myself: In some parts of this world access to education irrespective of gender is a distant dream. Also, if access irrespective of gender is already a problem, how much more hard is it for girls in societies where the expectations for girls and women do not include getting an education?

Having said that though, I must say that the situation has improved remarkably from what it used to be in my parents’ times. In my grandmother’s era, in the early 1900s, education was not as we know it now. My grandmother never saw the inside of a classroom.

Aunts and grandmothers were the teachers of that time. They taught the virtues and values of society, the roles of women and men in society and general knowledge on subjects like animal husbandry or planting and farming. In some communities, sex education was also incorporated into the “curriculum.” So if you asked whether my grandmother went to school: yes, she did!

When the colonial rulers of back then introduced formal education to Kenya, it was the boys who were given priority in attending school. Girls were being raised to take care of the home and bear children, and most parents didn’t see it as important to invest in their daughters’ education. As time went by and the socioeconomic dynamics changed, so did society. My parents had the chance to go to school. My father even went to school in the UK. Not to be left out, my mother graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 2008 and enrolled for a master’s in 2009. She is currently writing her research thesis.

She is not alone. There are hundreds of older people who have gone back to get a bachelor’s degree many years after being out of school. Many of these students are women. This has a direct effect on their families and the societies they come from. It sets a precedent and a good example in every home or society to which these women belong. The girls stand a better chance of having quality education if their mothers have had a taste of the fruits of education.

Education can raise a woman's 'value' - sometimes to men's dismay

In my culture, where the tradition of bride prices – money paid by a groom family to his future wife’s family – still exists, and a girl who has been educated is highly ‘priced.’ I know that this sounds like women and girls are equated to commodities, but it is seen as a way of showing appreciation to the girls’ parents for not only taking care of their daughter but also for giving their precious daughter away. I do not entirely agree with the practice, but it still happens!

Young men looking for wives have to part with a hefty amount of money if the girl is well educated and even has a job. Many young men face this pressure. Additionally, most men will not easily accept a woman who has more education or earns more money than he does. This is usually seen as a recipe for disaster. But this is all from my perspective – as a woman. I asked some men in Kenya what they think:

Men in Kenya on women and education

Communities should be made to understand that girls getting an education is not only a human right but it will also benefit them and the generations to come.

What’s your personal view on the subject?