The following is a presentation given by Mireille Fanon Mendes France at the World Education Forum- Palestine, on 30 October 2010 in Bethlehem. Fanon Mendes France is from the Frantz Fanon Foundation and the French Jewish Union for Peace.
Education must be a strategic weapon of resistance to oppression and the most effective way to ensure liberation for emancipation, because without education there is much risk of alienation, in the wider sense as explicated by Frantz Fanon, i.e. it is nourished by the cultural lag desired and organized by the forces that have an interest in the pursuit of domination.
The education expected in the current context is that of resignation, while education should be built on the linking of thoughts, and especially taking the risk of thinking and not fearing the being "on a line of witches," as Gilles Deleuze said.
That's what had been understood by those who fought through armed and political resistance during liberation struggles; they made education of the populations one of the most important priorities. From Vietnam to Algeria, literacy and education have generally been very quickly recognized as a founding dimension of resistance to oppression.
Thus the Palestinian people, who are among the most literate and educated peoples, do not ignore the crucial importance of training - especially against colonialism, which in its classical forms has largely disappeared from the surface of the earth, except here in Palestine.
This occupation-colonization, which is well aware of the dangers of an educated Palestinian people, regularly tries to delegitimize the education given in Palestine. For supporters of the occupation-colonization, yesterday as now, the strategies of domination are based on the maintenance of the broadest categories of people in ignorance and obscurantism. Their goal is to deny the Palestinian people the legitimacy to refer to themselves with the same references used by others. For the Israeli state, the "them as Palestinians " is only used to exist as "we Israelis." It's all "to naturalize cultural differences", which is neither more nor less than an approach based precisely on the modern racist ideologies.
Deculturation and ignorance allow theorists to justify the enslavement, domination and dispossession in obliterating the memory of peoples and prohibiting the transmission of history and knowledge. Let me quote again Frantz Fanon "Le peuple colonisé est idéologiquement présenté comme un peuple arrêté dans son évolution, imperméable à la raison, incapable de diriger ses propres affaires, exigeant la présence permanente d'une direction.L'histoire des peuples colonisés est transformée en agitation sans aucune signification et, de ce fait, on a bien l'impression que pour ces peuples, l'humanité a commencé avec l'arrivée de ces valeureux colons."[1]
This is exactly the content of French President Sarkozy's infamous January 2007 speech at Dakar University. For this porte parole of neo colonialism, the African man depicted as spooky is insulting, and is a man stopped on the path of history in which he does not want or cannot enter.
Therefore, education is a means of emancipation of consciences, which frees the will of servitude and oblivion imposed by reifying the memory, becoming a major political issue that alone justifies the need for training/education and its generalization.
The "historic" speech of masters of the liberal world is not only an expression of their contempt and ignorance, with ideological connotations, but contains a clear mission: to support the redeployment, under updated forms, of domination and thus of the fabric of marginalization and exclusion for so-called security reasons.
New forms of exploitation and domination made possible by the collapse of bureaucratic socialism in the late 1980s provide the only valid claim of the ultra-liberal model supreme market efficiency that cannot survive without military support for life in a "more safe world" as noted by the former UN Secretary General.
The credo of the market evangelists is essentially based on the supremacy of jungle law, where only the fittest can lead the world, and to do so the role of the State must be reduced to the smallest possible portion. In this scheme, the social role of the state is reduced to its simplest form, all activities are commercial in nature, and education becomes a prime target.
The ultra-liberal theories, propagated by the IMF and implemented under its supervision in finicky debt crises, have affected many countries of the South. The "conditionalities" of Structural Adjustment Programmes have been to impose privatization, deregulation and cuts in social spending, including first and foremost education and health. The consequences of this criminal policy are devastating in countries already very late in socio-cultural and economic plans. In Africa, a continent martyr in this respect, mass illiteracy blocks development of societies whose elites are too few. Only those who can afford a private education can hope for a brighter future, while others are delivered to charlatanism and sects ... The people without training are most vulnerable to manipulations. The IMF recipes, consistently applied in Haiti for example, mean that the people of this country that produces brilliant intellectuals are illiterate and of the 85% of 1000 children entering the school cycle, only 1.7% reach university. This monstrous mess, in large part, explains the endless tragedy of this country.
To address the actions of the police of liberalism, the mobilization of everyone is essential. If training and education are not sufficient to empower people, they are the prerequisites for true liberation. It is also necessary that education be rooted in the culture and history of the country and based on moral principles and clearly defined policy.
Colonialism that has formed only the people needed to maintain and reproduce its domination, inspires those who today attempt to train elites against the people.
Education for the people and at the service of all is the answer to all these manoeuvres. Compulsory education, widespread, massive and for all, is the absolute prerequisite to build a more just and humane society.
[1] In L'An V de la révolution algérienne (1959) éd. La Découverte, 2001, p. 176
Alternative Information Center
November 16th 2010
http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/topics/news/3001-educat...
