Swaziland: Participatory course in environmental education
Imagine an educational process that produces 200 graduates with no internal or external funding, where the institution running the course has no offices or support staff and where knowledge is viewed as a negotiated common commodity for all. Impossible? Unrealistic? Read on to find out about how The Swaziland Environmental Justice Agenda developed their course on environmental justice.
The Swaziland Environmental Justice Agenda (SEJA) is a social movement concerned with a variety of social issues. The issue of environmental injustice is central to SEJA’s concerns. SEJA has developed the Swaziland Participatory Course in Environmental Education, known as the ‘environmental course’, which uses an alternative approach to education to develop a critical understanding of environmental injustice.
According to SEJA’s viewpoint, environmental injustice is embedded in the global economic system, a system that is built around non-humanistic values. Over the years, the system has been sweet-coated by policy announcements that do not translate to sustainable support for people or the environment. The recent military actions that have been launched by the architects of the globalization process have proven that the capitalist values are still the same as those that informed the colonialisation process.
Swaziland is a society where people are not on the information super train. Many people in Swaziland, even the middle class, have no economic means to access the information in magazines and books, on the internet, etc. They are thus kept from the issues that define policy directions and programmes.
Swaziland is a country with an education system that is heavily influenced by its colonial past. It is a system which discourages the development of critical thinking. Free speech is banned in Swaziland by a 1973 decree and the education system has been able to enshrine a culture of compliance to this decree.
The Environmental Course
The SEJA environmental course is a humble act of activism to address this reality and start the process of social emancipation. It has opened up several alternatives to the way in which Swaziland society approaches issues of education.
The purpose of the course is to create an opportunity for environmental and development workers and activists to acquire the knowledge base that will allow them to critically debate the issues that define the progressive agenda. The course has been designed to make it possible for marginalized groups in the Swazi society to access tertiary-level education. The fundamental principle informing enrollment is the “open entry open exit” principle. This means that the course participants come from different educational backgrounds and levels.
Teaching a class with, for example, domestic workers, bus conductors and university lecturers is an experience that is sobering in many ways. It challenges our assumption about knowledge and the way knowledge is “developed”. It also requires alternative means on how education is conducted. The approach and methods of this course are not unique, they draw on Paulo Freire’s ideas, articulated in the book, “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed”.
The reason why we developed the course was the realization that many environmental educators and activists have no deep understanding of the issues. International groups are organizing campaigns in several fronts. Swaziland is always being left behind.
The course is structured around four key themes, namely:
- Theme 1: The Environmental Crisis: Issues, Problems and Risks
- Theme 2: The Response to the Environmental Crisis
- Theme 3: Environmental Education: Processes and Methods
- Theme 4: Curriculum and Programme Development
Each theme is introduced by a core text, which provides an overview of the issues and concepts. Every year, the tutors look at the core text and make changes based on the assignments of the past participants. This is done in an attempt to contextualise the core text to the realities of Swaziland.
In addition to the core text, there is an attachment of further readings, which include academic papers, newspaper cuttings, past participant’s assignments, case studies, reports etc. This allows the participants access to a diversity of perspectives, thus enriching the debates.
To use the first theme as an example, the core text introduces the issue of the economic system as the cause of the environmental crisis. Discussion is informed by a Theodor Shanin essay, “Idea of Progress”. The participants engage the question as to whether the international economic regimes result in improvement of the third world. They debate the availability of loans that continue to worsen the debt crisis.
Environmental education includes a four-dimensional framework for analysis of issues, namely the economic, political, social and biophysical dimensions. This framework opens up a broader spectrum for the analysis of issues. It deepens the ethos of critical thinking, which is an essential element of the development of social praxis. Praxis is the ability of participants to translate learned theory to social action and to translate the experience gained into improved theory.
What has become apparent is that most people in Swaziland have an in-built self-censorship. This is a major contributor to the reality that Swaziland is lacking literature that defines its unique political, social, economic and environmental crisis. The course, by allowing an environment of free speech, is helping to heal this problem.
Contextualization, Reflexivity, Praxis and Reflection
The course process is based on four fundamental principles. The first is the contextual principle, based on the view that a socially meaningful educational process should address itself to the issues that are relevant to that society. The course includes four assignments which act as a mechanism by which the participants discuss and review their individual context. This may be drawn from the work that the participant is engaged in, the campaigns that he or she is currently working on, etc. The course has an immediate benefit for various social programmes. It allows the participants to identify the political conditions that enable or disable social progress. It encourages the application of social praxis.
The reflexivity principle is about the internal mobilization of the participants to take appropriate action to mitigate and correct a social problem that is identified in the contextualisation of their reality. To date, Swaziland’s progressive forces have been able to narrate the political, social and economic conditions prevailing in the country. But, definite actions that can address the conditions have not been taken. This is due to a lack of reflexivity, which is embedded in an education system that discourages critical thinking.
The third principle is that of social praxis. There is a huge difference between theory and practice. An approach to social change that is led by a group of intellectuals that are excited by externally-developed theories and ideologies tends to emphasise theories without making the connection to practice. The course teaching and learning is informed by social constructivism. Knowledge is constructed by people in a social setting. This process detects that knowledge development cannot be created by academics to the exclusion of the people and the social reality. Social programmes of meaning are informed by a sound theory and that theory is continuously being informed by the reality.
Swaziland in the mid-nineties saw the progressive movement wage its greatest challenge to the state yet. The actions, including mass stayaways, demonstrations, petitions and boycotts, were informed by a particular revolutionary theory. Unfortunately the leaders of the different groups did not practice praxis. As a result, the masses lost the necessary steam to sustain the action.
It is essential that an educational process empowers the participant with the ability to take time out from the on-going activities, that he or she engages in reflection. In the social milieu, a number of processes are at play. There are many times that you find that the comrades you are working with do not share the same values as you or the movement you all belong to. The revolutionary comrade, Mphandlana Shongwe, once said during a college class boycott, “It is necessary for one to move out of a supposed straight road, in order to verify that it is still a straight road”. The reflection principle is basically about that, being able to think deeply about process. The power of reflection lies in its ability to bring clarity.
NGOs and Funding
The course is readily distinguishable from those routinely offered in the non-governmental organization (NGO) sector. Many people have been disillusioned by the reality that social programmes under the leadership of NGOs that are purported to be people driven are all too often nothing of the sort. They are conceived by NGO elites. NGO officers in executive offices in capital cities have been able to define the people’s agenda and content of programmes of action. Practice has shown that, even with NGO-driven educational programmes, the content and scope is also determined in a non-participatory manner.
These activities are entirely dependent on the availability of foreign funding. Moreover, the greatest percentage of funds that goes to NGOs is not taken by project activities but by personnel costs that go to finance the unsustainable lifestyles of the NGO elites. It is a sad reality that NGO offices are generally far removed from the problems experienced by their so-called target groups. These groups are defined in different ways, depending on the current fashionable donor description. People are defined in NGO official documents as marginalized people, Orphans Vulnerable Children (OVCs), etc. These descriptions create a barrier to meaningful consultation with them. In subtle ways, those that use these descriptions elevate themselves above their target groups.
The cost of food, accommodation and travel at many civil society gatherings limits the extent to which these programmes are accessible to the people defined by NGOs as poor and not privileged. This artificial over-costing of civil activities is in effect a marginalisation of the people. I was shocked by the paradox that emerged at the annual Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa (EEASA) conference, namely that members continuously complained about the “poor standard” of conference venues. This is not a comment about the organizational shortfalls of the conference, it is rather an indictment of the materialistic values of those that attended. This is true of many conferences of groupings that work for sustainable development and sustainable living environments. There is a related problem in that many comrades hide their true values behind politically acceptable words in fancy documents, publications, conferences, seminars and workshops, while their actions do not demonstrate a shift from the values of the corporate world.
All too often, social groups are not able to develop programmes that address their issues because there is no external funding. But the lack of financial resources is a challenge that has to be overcome. The Swaziland Environmental Justice Agenda has not received any external or internal funding to support its programmes. More than 200 people have graduated from the environment course without the course having received any funding in the NGO sense.
When SEJA embarked on this course, there was no physical office of the organisation. It was started by a small civic group of people concerned about particular issues or problems. There were eight of us, the majority of whom were not members of any political group. Environmental processes are political in nature, but affiliation to a political grouping was never an issue.
The participants brought food for tutorials and ate together. After participants graduated, many volunteered to become tutors for the next round of participants. The course has continued to depend on the ability of tutors to volunteer their time and knowledge. (By volunteering, we do not mean the existence of allowances that are far more than other people’s salaries. These are the tricks other people perform with our good hearts and intentions.)
The course provides a platform on which a new alternative approach to education can be launched. The educational process is emancipatory in a sense that knowledge is a negotiated common commodity for all. It opens up the boundaries of the course content to all stakeholders. It is truly driven by participants, giving meaning to the philosophical orientation that it a participatory course.
The true value of the course must be measured by the extent to which the participants influence people to approach their context with an attitude based on critical thinking and the degree to which it stimulates civic programmes that are no longer informed by liberal economic ideas.
Sivumelwano Nyembe, [email protected]
* Please send comments to [email protected]