How nonformal learning experiences are uniquely equipped to move communities closer to gender equity, through their foundation on the examination of assumptions and absorbed value systems which create the learner-led shifts in cultural norms necessary to end deeply embedded practices such as female genital mutilation.
I first began hearing people talk about Nietzsche in high school: mostly teenage boys pontificating in basements full of smoke on “how cool he was, man”, and how he taught them that “nothing matters”. I now find myself wondering if those boys had ever actually read Nietzsche. Things very much mattered to him. One of his chief concerns was his realization that humans have a propensity to absorb and accept as their own value systems, those which were created by the powerful to act as invisible yokes of control. In essence, our ideas today about what is “natural” or “unchangeable” have been handed down to us through the generations, having been created by other humans to serve their own interests. He beseeched us to find the courage to question our reality and placed the highest value upon creative action: for one to separate what is nature from what is construct, to then discard the imposed ideas which do not serve us, and ultimately to build a value system reflective of who we are, not how others perceive us. For Nietzsche, a teacher’s role in this process was to unlock your ability to think for yourself, to ask critical questions, and to unleash the creative ability to not only imagine a new reality for yourself, but the agency to go forth and create it. And all this he was writing back in the 1870s and 1880s. Those boys were right about one thing, he was cool, man.
I wasn’t expecting Nietzsche to come to mind as I sat contemplating what levers of power needed prodding to bring an end to harmful practices like female genital mutilation. Yet he did. His ideas, which predate terms like “cultural hegemony” and “social constructs” by a hundred years, point to the heart of the matter. Human beings must be given the space and tools to deconstruct their cultural norms, taking with them what works, casting off all else. Teachers should act as facilitators in this transformation of consciousness, unleashing the critical examination skills which underpin the formation of just societies and remain inadequately addressed within the structure of formal education.
The institution of formal education is inarguably an integral avenue for development. Access to quality education is a key path along which women around the planet have been progressing as they step ever closer to gender equity. Yet, for as much as we have worked at moving the bar, some practices and behaviors seem firmly entrenched, perhaps even unchangeable. Female genital mutilation, sometimes referred to as cutting (FGM/C), is one such practice.
The UNFPA defines FGM/C as “a practice that involves altering or injuring the female genitalia for non-medical reasons”. FGM/C is classified into four forms “ranging from partial or total removal of the clitoris, the outer or inner vaginal lips, to narrowing the vaginal opening by partially sealing it up”. Lifelong complications are many and can include painful menstrual periods, painful urination, painful intercourse, dangerous infections, and increased rate of newborn deaths, not to mention psychological trauma.
The persistence of FGM/C is reflective of gender inequalities and the power of social norms. Separated from homes of origin by over 6,000 miles and an entire ocean, the rate of FGM/C in immigrant communities within the United States remains high. In 2013 alone, the PRB estimates there were up to 507,000 women and girls within the US who had either undergone FGM/C or were expected to.
And despite growing global outrage, FGM/C not only continues to be practiced, but is happening to younger and younger girls, and is now being provided as a service by some health-trained practitioners. This encroachment into the officially sanctioned health sector is concerning as it increases the perception of normalcy and acceptableness.
So how can nonformal learning programs counter these practices which have persisted despite countless efforts to teach and regulate individuals into stopping? Where the student participating in the formal institution of education focuses primarily on the acquisition of new information and skills with the explicit end-goal of entering the ranks of the gainfully employed, nonformal learning opportunities are able to focus on awakening critical consciousness. As Nietzsche might have explained it, had he been alive in the 21st century: creating the framework and opening the space for individuals to recognize that their assumptions of what is natural and unchangeable are in fact human constructs, is the first step in moving people towards emancipation.
Further, learner-led critical examination will reveal those assumptions and values which are neither healthy for the individual nor the community, and in fact hinder their journey towards equity. Once learners are able to separate nature from human constructed practices and ideas, they are able to understand that, as other human beings before them created these expectations, so too can they create their own. Armed with this revelation, they can then begin the work of removing from their reality those practices which do not serve them. A practice such as FGM/C is a prime example. But this transformation of consciousness is not arrived at through traditional education institutions. This is about opening the safe space for dialogue and the critical self-examination of assumptions, not treating individuals as passive vessels into which information can be poured.
In my next post we’ll look at Tostan, an organization in Senegal helping communities across Africa begin their transformative journey, with teachers as facilitators, there to unlock the innate human capacity to examine and create. The results are more than promising.
