OpenEd Wk 9 *** Elective Reading Synopses

The White Man’s Burden offers several insights to the open education movement. Specifically, I appreciate the following points:

I. There is no panacea “Big Plan” that will eliminate poverty
II. Localization by locals is the best secret of success
III. Searchers, not Planners will create sustainable outcomes

I. There is no panacea “Big Plan” that will eliminate poverty
While I did not agree with all of Easterly’s points, I did find several salient features of his book, particularly the supporting arguments he gave for why big plans tend to fall apart. With regard to the open education movement, I believe this means that we should not expect massive funding or a blanket policy as the means whereby OER is taken across the globe.

It is irrational to expect that there will be a “one-size-fits-all” model; nor is it prudent to assume that everyone in developing countries should be online in order for development to transpire. There have been several failed development initiatives in the past, the majority of them from very well-funded, even possibly well-motivated, Western bi-lateral and multi-lateral donors who are interested to “dictate” how development should happen.

Easterly argues that a “piecemeal approach” to development will reap the greatest rewards because these kind of initiatives lend themselves to accountability (on the part of both the donor and the recipient). With regard to open education, I believe this means that we must always think of “the one” – meaning, the teacher, the student, the user – and empower that individual with the tools so that he or she can create his or her own educational course.

II. Localization by locals is the best secret for success
Since the open education movement might be considered a “Western movement” at the moment, occurring mostly in so-called “developed” nations, in higher-education arenas, there are myriad challenges that arise as we consider application of these initiatives among rural, disenfranchised, lower-literate groups.

Easterly’s points regarding localization are scathing in their depiction of very inadequate approaches to facilitate localization, let alone to allow locals their right to tailor development programs to their own interests and needs.

The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and US Agency for International Development are examples of big funders who give billions of dollars with correlating strings attached. These strings have often hampered development because opportunities for localization are deficient at best and nonexistent at worst.

I have seen this while working on a USAID-funded literacy initiative in Pakistan during 2005, 2006 and 2007. Even though the feedback from locals inspired change for the steering of the initiative, the USAID leaders would not listen to the locals and forbade us (myself and other field workers on the ground) to actually execute the localized plan.

If the open education movement is to learn from this, it is important that indigenous and native practitioners, change agents, government leaders, and community representatives (from across the entire economic spectrum of a nation – those with economic capital and those with social capital) be given the ability and the right to access, localize, and share the content they wish to utilize. Since this is a core philosophy overriding the open education movement, I feel the foundation from which we build is a firm one.

III. Searchers, not Planners will create sustainable outcomes
Easterly differentiates between those who design and dictate programs for others from those who seek out opportunities and create solutions for themselves. Essentially, he draws a clear line between those who provide for dependents from the outsider (planners) and those who provide self-reliantly for themselves from the inside (searchers).

Although this point dovetails with the previous one regarding localization, it also expands on the economic concept of supply and demand. If a village is not ready for the project and if they are not committed to own the responsibility of the initiative, then that project will be short-lived and sustainability will be impossible.

However, if the locals are interested in a particular initiative, and are finding within their own community the resources in order to partake in the bounty of an opportunity, then those people are more likely to meet with success as a new initiative is launched.

This dynamic is true with regard to my involvement in the Youth-Managed Resource Center (YMRC) project in Nepal. This is a community-initiated library and learning center initiative which seeks to share knowledge and information with rural villagers via trained youth managers. Youth are vehicles whereby rural folk may search for health, agricultural or economic information via appropriate technologies (e.g. computers, internet, CD Rom, and other tools).

After conducting a situation analysis of several communities with interest in YMRC sites, we found two villages that were particularly ready for additional start-up support to build their own center. Since the demand was high in this area, the project was met with eager support by an involved community leadership board and well-prepared youth managers.

By contrast, a different village was informed about the YMRC by an NGO representative who encouraged the villagers to try this new YMRC initiative, even though they didn’t quite understand the need for computers or the benefits of being “online.” But, according to NGO direction, the center was initiated at that time (May 2007).

One year later (May 2008), we visited this site only to find that very few villagers were using the computers and that, in fact, many people still did not even know the purpose of computers nor that they were available for community use. Several youth protested that they were not properly trained nor invited to participate in the initiative and that, although they were interested

If the open education movement is to learn from this example, it is important to focus efforts in areas where demand is high and where locals prepare for and commit resources (time, money, and volunteers) in order to launch their OER initiative. NGOs and international donors must safeguard against supply of services and of initiation of project sites where the demand does not initially exist.

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Reading this book was valuable for me because I found myself questioning my own motives for being involved in development and by trying to wrap my head around the ways that I can learn from past experiences (both personal and vicarious) as we approach the opening of educational resources in developing countries, particularly in Nepal.

I found some of Easterly’s suppositions to be narrow-minded and egotistical. I feel that he makes broad, sweeping declarations and sometimes faulty analogies. I feel that, although he makes a clear-cut distinction between the “planners” and the “searchers,” there is often a grey area where planners are also searching and where searchers also start planning. I think it is important to actually bridge the two groups anyway, instead of to accept the differences and preserve the territorial camps. That is the only way that the open education movement can truly do so much good while avoiding so much ill which has transpired in the past.