Necessary transgression: A paradigm shift in pedagogy

The field of education is a relatively new one. There is much to explore and expand on within the sector. There is much to add and subtract and divide and multiply within knowledge. Whatever little knowledge I did have on education stemmed from my working on the ground. I work within an extremely narrow niche, i.e., alia madrasahs. My approach doesn't measure educational outcomes like the increase in enrolment rate, reduction in drop-out rate, subject-based performances. We don't take scores, or measure performances in numbers or track pass or fail. Alia madrasahs are a minority which will likely be replaced with secular schools eventually, anyway.

Will they? There are presently 10,450 Alia madrasahs in operation in Bangladesh where more than two million students are enrolled in different classes from primary to postgraduate levels, according to Bangladesh Education Statistics 2016, published by the Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics (BANBEIS). Also, arguably, much of the oft-cited increase in enrolment rate and gender parity in education can be attributed to recent reforms in the madrasah sector. Nearly half of the student population in these alia madrasahs today is female. So while madrasah schools are not the majority, they are not insignificant.

In fact, parents from a variety of socioeconomic strata are turning away from "regular" state schools to madrasahs to help preserve social values, and they are opting to send their daughters to madrasahs with the belief that these schools are safer for girls. Marriage-related motivations also influence the parental choice of schooling for girls since there is a notion that madrasah education instills traditional values that make their daughters more eligible in the marriage market. Under the circumstances, alia madrasahs have become preferred form of schooling for the more religiously minded communities in the country providing educational opportunity to over 1.5 million girls in Bangladesh.

In communities where religious schooling is the only socially acceptable form of education for adolescent girls, parents are unenthusiastic to send their daughters to secular schools regardless of the provision of cash or food subsidies. By observing Islamic religious teachings -- for example, about girls and boys occupying separate spaces -- madrasahs help ease the distress of many parents about protecting the honour of their daughters while in school. For religiously-minded parents, alia madrasahs offering both secular and religious education provide a comforting response to the social influence of a swiftly globalising world. So while, theoretically, it makes sense that religious schools would be replaced by secular schooling, what is happening in practice is that madrasahs, for a lot of people, are becoming more relevant than secular schools.

In such a case then, at least explore, if not accommodate, for the sector. So, how do we begin this process? Madrasahs currently operate on what Freire would refer to as the banking method of education. In his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he describes the model as a one where education is seen as a process of depositing knowledge into passive students. Teachers are the epistemological authority in this system; students' pre-existing knowledge is disregarded, aside from what was expected to be 'deposited' into them earlier. Freire refers to a banking paradigm as regards students to be "adaptable, manageable beings."

In bell hooks' "Teaching to Transgress" she promotes the idea of engaged pedagogy, as an alternative to the banking method. In that technique, learners question, become vocal, and recognise their place in the learning conversation to counter the multifaceted oppression faced within the practice and theory of education in multicultural environments to advocate anti-colonial, critical, and feminist pedagogies.

The text borrows mainly from ideologies of Paulo Freire, for ideas on education as a practice of freedom and Thích Nh?t H?nh, for addressing the whole person and the role of a teacher as a healer, urges readers to "open their minds and hearts so they can know beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable, so that they can think and rethink, so they can create new visions."

Transgression has a negative connotation. To transgress is to trespass, to sin, to cross limits. However, to transgress in a classroom is an act necessary to create learning environments where education can evolve and transform those who learn and those who teach.

So what would this transgression look like?

For most people, they download knowledge. Meaning, they learn in schools and universities and then take the knowledge they acquire 'up there' down to the field. Personally, it has always been the other way round for me. I upload knowledge. I take what I learn on the ground to the classrooms I learn in. So my vision for classes that function as locations of possibility instead of a hellhole where dreams come to an end is also borrowed from my experience in the field.

Engaged pedagogy promotes fair dialogue, critical questioning, and recognizing one's own voices as whole persons, privileges, experiences, and limitations. A holistic approach to education would entail, first of all, recognizing the person as a whole. This is difficult in a madrasah for a myriad of reasons. During the language movement in 1952, madrasahs were placed in an awkward position because of a strong emphasis on Urdu in the curriculum before 1971. After the country's liberation, some madrasahs continued their curriculum in Urdu, and some did not. Historically, there has been some friction between the linguistic and 'religio-political' identities promoted in this medium of education. The sector has often been seen as a ground for breeding anti-nationalist and anti-state sentiments amongst students.

The international community has also regarded madrasahs as a breeding ground for terrorism, based on the fundamentalist ideologies that they are assumed to promote their religious orientation. It is not surprising then that there is a perceived conflict between national and international values and a resulting stigma.

The first step, therefore, would be to accommodate for multiple dimensions of one's identity. A psychosocial-support programme may help, where an in-depth analysis of the students' psyche is undertaken, and a space provided where students are free to speak. We do

this through volunteer counsellors but teachers may very well, as hooks suggest, adopt the role of healers. The teacher as a healer would facilitate an environment where students can become self-actualized and reaffirmed, and students and teachers can simultaneously be empowered.

Students also must be taught to embrace their whole selves. Ideally, classrooms would be feminist classrooms where issues of gender and class are regularly discussed and challenged. Since I work mostly with girls, I can understand the importance of teaching young women the importance of drawing firm boundaries, respecting our own bodies, taming our inner critics, channelling our hidden warriors. Exercises that enable students to think critically about who they are, why they are the way they are, empowering them to be the best version of themselves, allowing them to accept the parts of themselves they cannot change can be undertaken through games, theatre performances, art workshops, etc.

Subject-based training must be designed in a way that enables critical thinking. English must be taught, not as merely a language, but as a method of communication. Although I do sometimes wonder what hooks would have to say about teaching English in a room full of non-English speakers who are survivors of colonization. The same would have to be said of science and math for the way that they are currently taught are also practices of the West. Maybe, hooks would argue that teaching these subjects as colonial knowledge would further perpetuate oppression.

However, regardless of whether we teach math, science or language, attempts must be made to source the students' knowledge of themselves and what the world views they have acquired. The national curriculum incorporates dialogue into the English Language syllabus. To have the students write out their favourite dialogues from books, movies, television channels or conversations from their daily lives, and then perform them, could be part of an engaged pedagogical approach.

Finally, students have to be equipped with a set of skills that make them citizens of the future. But the skills should not be merely skills. For instance, if we are giving them computer skills, the goal should be to enable them to not solely operate a computer and understand its function but move beyond. They should be using technology to solve critical problems of the future, not just consuming them. Train them to use technology as a tool to combat significant issues like global warming, sexual harassment, road safety, and psychosocial disability.

But most importantly, for all this to happen, the existing power dynamics where the power is vested primarily with the teacher must be dismantled.

Of course, all of these may well be entirely usable techniques in any classroom. I chose madrasahs to operate in because the needs of children studying here are grossly underserved and so there is a lot more to do here. Because the children are usually needy, they are hungry for knowledge, and far more accepting of this gift than those privileged with easy access. The questions of 'who am I?' that are so oft-emerging within the sector because of complex historical narratives that have shaped their existence makes it, for me, a far more interesting space to work in.

But this transgression is a necessary transgression that must be performed across all mediums to create education as the practice of freedom. To foster "an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries." To be free.

Shagufe Hossain is the founder of Leaping Boundaries.

[email protected]