**It is September 2015. You are a memetic designer whose task is to introduce culture change to the national education system of Tanzania. You are funded by UNESCO..
Your goal is to assist the leadership of the education system in its attempt to leapfrog hundreds of years of educational tradition, effectively moving from 12th-14th Century learning to advanced 21st Century learning, including routine knowledge production and innovation by students at all levels.
You are using the tools of the Anthropologist and the Experimenter. Indicate how you put these tools to use in your work, including how you solve problems that present themselves. Pay special attention to how simulations (including ‘serious’ games, if you so choose) play a role in your work.**
September 27, 2010
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Give or take, Homo sapiens have been around the earth for 200,000 to 100,000 years, yet in the past 100 years our level of innovation and the extent of generational and intergenerational change has increased exponentially. We have created items and innovations, and controlled nature to a degree that was reserved only to the Gods before us.
There has been rapid change, and great part of this change has been positive. However, during these years of rapid growth, humanity has also committed its most extensive atrocities. In addition, every day, we experience a greater separation from the general, cumulative human culture, as we are further unable to know, comprehend and retain a larger share of humanity’s collective data. This feeling of alienation can be dangerous. It can lead individuals to feel depressed, alienated, creating fear and leading some to return to what they know and then promote their (more manageable) traditional religious world views.
Promoting change and innovation can help individuals create the tools that will help to radically transform society. Yet, rapid change increases chaos, which in the past resulted in the establishment of reigns of terror and regressive leaps.
As an experimenter, one of my concerns would be to make sure that the change that is developed is not done without a comprehensive understanding of the context in which it will be promoted. Development can bring about a growth in economic production and increased material wealth, yet for thousands of years some traditional cultures flourished. At least according to their own perception, their society had been stable.
As such, the introduction of new ideas should happen only to the degree that they are willing to incorporate these ideas into their society. After all, can we truly say that our society is better today than it was yesterday? Perhaps we can, but then is modern society in the United States today better in every aspect than society in Tanzania, including by measurements of carbon emissions and the generation of solid waste or the production of toxic materials. If anything, their society proved to be sustainable.
As such, Tanzania’s goal should not be to emulate the west, or the east (China, India), or a different point of view, rather their goal would be develop a formula for their own development and to improve their own culture only as they see fit. Even if an intrusion to their society is done with the best intentions, the reaction to those trying to change the status quo can generate a mobilization against “modernizing” or development oriented policies. Change should be endogenous and external organizations should only guide them by providing them the support and guidance to implement an effective project to develop their country in their own terms.
As an anthropologist, I would train a group of individuals to assess what are the most urgent needs in their communities and how certain changes would be received by the community. What do they consider to be the problem? Will the change be welcomed? In addition, various projects should be pursued simultaneously, including a control group. The control group could possibly be composed of the parents who most strongly believe in children’s adherence to traditional values. The project would be extensively evaluated every six months, and minor modifications will take place through the year. Various schools will implement different changes, from increased use of ICT, to greater emphasis in service learning, peace education, and teacher-led education, among others. Micro credits would be available for new schools to be established and the system would promote a degree of openness to innovation reminiscent of the United States charter school movement.
Among some of the innovations which I would be particularly interested in promoting is to insure that they have an increased access to information through the internet. OpenCourseWare materials would include subtitles in their local language and the government would increase its budget devoted to education, to promote, among other things, for every child to have a laptop. Sugata Mitra’s “Holes in the Wall” would be a way in which communities could access information. They could learn whatever they wanted to learn. Enough augmented reality devices (developed for rough terrains) would be distributed to provide access to information to those wishing to have it. By then Google translate may be able to translate in the community’s language without major glitches. Modern society has accumulated, through its research and development, extensive libraries filled with valuable information containing western society’s memes. Providing access to the people of Tanzania and allowing them to develop their own schools and promote various types of innovations would be a way in which they could adapt the knowledge generated by other cultures into their own without feeling forced to “modernize” or “develop”.
They would also have access to advanced simulations through laptops, the “holes in the wall”, and other augmented reality devices, where individuals would be able to learn about other parts of the world and professions by experiencing them through a virtual environment. Using multi-modal learning, abstract concepts and descriptions could be further explained through the appropriate use of media such as pictures, audio clips and video. While information has been increasingly made accessible online, some countries have limited access to the internet and information in their own language. In addition, a large amount of valuable information has not been presented in a way that it can be attractive to the average viewer. A large portion of the population continues to be uninterested in thinking critically and innovating. This can be encouraged by promoting reasoning techniques such as the “Socratic method”, but they can also be further stimulated by making usually dry information more appealing.
