Declared An Alternative To Top--Down Globalization

By George Lakey

December,02

Fourteen ethnic and national groups came to an ashram near Bangkok for the first Asia Super-T November 6-22,02. The "Super-Training" shares facilitation skills and design concepts for experiential education (also called popular education).

While we were working in Thailand a major Asian conference was simultaneously happening in the Philippines on "Alternatives to Globalization." One of the leaders of the conference came to our training site just after the Super-T finished to declare the work we were doing as itself "an alternative to globalization."

I perked up my ears, because TFC's work abroad has occasionally been challenged as itself a form of Western cultural imperialism. I asked the conference leader to discuss her view further with a group of Thai trainers who were at our training site, Wongsanit Ashram.

The group of Thais agreed unanimously that the TFC approach to training stands against corporate-led globalization trends.

Why?

• Globalization makes people feel dependent on experts and external institutions, but this training approach shows that people can learn from and trust each other.
• This training approach results in people awakening to what is going on rather than encouraging distraction by materialism and consumerism.
• Our training empowers grassroots people and stiffens their ability to be critical of "overwhelming trends" toward globalization.
• Our training stimulates people to weigh choices and become strategic in working for change and defending their values.
• Our training affirms the value of open conflicts, which Asian mass resistance movements are waging (for example, protesting World Bank dam-building projects). Some traditional Asian cultures include values which undermine mass resistance (for example a traditional Thai preference for avoiding open conflict and instead relying on behind-the-scenes dealing).
• Our training supports the growth of participants' inner life, reducing their vulnerability to the seduction of Western consumerism and commodification of culture.

MAKING A SUPER-T IN ASIA

Training for Change has held six Super-T's in Philadelphia, all of which included Asians. Our long-time Thai-based partners, the Spirituality in Education Movement (SEM) and International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB), decided to host the first Super-T for Asians, co-facilitated by Ouyporn Khuankaew, Pracha Hutanwatr, and George Lakey. The 22 participants came from the Philippines, Cambodia, East Timor, and Thailand. Refugees from Burma included participants from Pa-O, Shan, Kachin, Mon, and Karen ethnic groups.

Nearly all the participants teach in some way at home, usually affiliated with nongovernmental organizations. As they build grassroots power and civil society, they can use methods that empower rather than maintain the old patterns of experts telling people what to do.

At the end of their 14 days of training (and 2 days off) we asked the participants which tools/activities they would most likely use back home, out of the 32 tools we shared. The 5 rated most likely were: elicitive questions, small task groups, practice groups, closing circles, and role-plays.

Of the team challenges we taught (from the field of Adventure Based Learning), those rated most likely to be used back home were Moon Ball and Walking Together.

We shared 23 training concepts in this Super-T, and those were also rated by participants on a scale of likelihood to be used. The most likely were: comfort zone, peeling the onion, the four-step model of experiential education, the four major learning channels, and reading (or diagnosing) the group's dynamics.

While the great majority of participants gave high marks in their evaluation, including words like "exciting," "challenging," "inspiring," my own sense was that a significant number did not get the full value of the workshop either because of difficulties with English language or because of lack of previous experience with experiential education.

This was my first English-language workshop for Asians (in dozens of workshops in five Asian countries), and I'm now doubtful about the value of training in English unless there is a high level of proficiency. This was my second time trying to assist people to move -- during a single training event -- from their first encounter with experiential education to being able actually to facilitate experiential education themselves by the conclusion of the workshop. I'm now convinced by those two experiments (once in Europe and now once in Asia) that there are better ways of sharing this educational approach. Experiential education is too big a shift from the old pattern of passivity and rote learning for participants to be able to make the change in one swift leap. Giving up the old pattern and gaining confidence in the practice of experiential education is in fact a paradigm shift, not simply borrowing a few tools. The depth of the change can be underestimated.

Fortunately, this Super-T did attract a number of participants with English skills and background in experiential education. The Super-T did result in substantial learning for those participants, which will pay off for the ongoing work of grassroots social change training in SE Asia.

THAI TRAINERS HOLD REUNION IN MIDST OF "WAR ON TERROR" POLARIZATION

Previous TFC trainings of trainers in Asia have been translated trainings, for Burmese, for Cambodians, and (most frequently) for Thais. Beginning in 1995 TFC Training Associate Karen Ridd and George Lakey developed with Thai colleagues a four-level curriculum for training facilitators, with each level an intensive five-six day workshop. Typically the Thai trainers take only one or two levels in a given year, to give them the chance to practice in between. In 1998 we graduated the first group from the fourth level. This curriculum is now entirely managed and led by Thai trainers, as a program of the Spirit in Education Movement (SEM).

The "old gang" of Thai trainers asked for a chance to get together with me at Wongsanit Ashram after completion of the Super-T, to share victory stories, to network, and to learn something new. 14 gathered, including 3 Buddhist nuns, 3 monks, and lay people working with villagers resisting dam-building, alternative educators, and student activists. We had a great time sharing about the frontiers of training in their society and in mine, the role of training in political struggle and spirituality, and new ways of looking at group dynamics in a workshop.

I've sometimes wondered if there is a chilling effect on comradeship between U.S. activists and others because of my government's dramatic bullying behavior. I therefore asked the Thai alumni for a frank appraisal of TFC's role in supporting Thai work, once we were relaxed together. I drew on the resulting discussion in the beginning of this report. The bottom line of the Thais is consistent with their culture's way of highly valuing relationship: they don't see us as technicians coming from abroad simply to impart a set of techniques, but instead as friends collaborating with deep respect.

I was reminded of an anonymous saying which has long been my motto:

"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you are coming because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."

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