Learning as a Civil Right

Mary Maker is a South Sudanese refugee, a United Nations High Commission for Refugees activist, and founder of Elimisha Kakuma, a non-profit committed to helping Sudanese refugees to become smarter and stronger.

In 2018, Maker gave an impassioned TED Talk at TedxKakumaCamp titled “Why I Fight for the Education of Refugee Girls.” Here are excerpts from that talk:

“Education creates an equal and fair chance for everyone to make it. I personally believe education is not all about the syllabus. It’s about friendship. It’s about discovering our talents. It’s about discovering our destiny…. As a teacher, I see my classroom as a laboratory that not only generates skills and knowledge but also understanding and hope….”

“Education heals. The [learning] environment gives you a focus to focus ahead. Let’s take it this way: when you’re busy solving mathematical equations, and you are memorizing poetry, you forget the violence that you witnessed back home. And that is the power of education. It creates this place for peace. Kakuma is teeming with learners. Over 85,000 students are enrolled in schools here, which makes up 40 percent of the refugee population. It includes children who lost years of education because of the war back home. And I want to ask you a question: If education is about building a generation of hope, why are there 120 students packed in my classroom? Why is it that only six percent of primary school students are making it to high school, simply because we do not have enough places for them? And why is it that only one percent of the secondary school graduates are making it to university?”

Learning has been said to be the civil right of the 21^st century. Young learners who have the freedom to read, write, solve problems, and build character are in a far better position to make something of themselves than those who are blocked from those opportunities. But if learning is the civil right of the 21^st century, why are so many young learners prevented from becoming smarter and stronger, in South Sudan, New York’s Bronx, and so many other place around the world?

There’s too much classicism in our traditional K-12 systems around the world and here in America. Primarily poor kids are discriminated against when it comes to learning opportunities, because of their economic and social status. Here in the United States, black, brown, and poor kids fall behind and stay behind throughout their K-12 educational experience. And there isn’t a plan to help those kids that has worked on a large scale.

We can do better. We can use the example of Mary Maker, someone who could easily abandon South Sudan’s children and focus on her own career and popularity. But Maker says no, because she understands the importance of helping disadvantaged youth to become smarter and stronger in their reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development skills.

Here in America, do we really believe in what someone like Mary Maker believes? Are we willing to develop learning plans to help all kids become smarter and stronger? Are we willing to discard our current K-12 teaching and learning system in favor of a system that focuses on personalized learning? Are we willing to reward adult learning leaders with better compensation and status based on the progress of their young learners, especially those who are kids of poverty and suffer from low performance?

Sadly, too many of us answer “no” to these questions, not because we aren’t interested in making a change in how we develop learners in this country, but because we don’t match our interest with the right amount of commitment to help all kids define, plan, execute, and evaluate their own learning.

If kids can define, plan, execute, and evaluate their own learning, then they are owners of their own learning today and in their future. And that is something to commit to.

Friday News Roundup tomorrow. Til then. SVB