INTRODUCTION
This chapter analyses Tostan’s HRE programme in Galle Toubaaco. It pro- vides an overview of the programme by analysing how different factors played a key role in classroom dynamics. I analyse three different features of the programme that were important both in triggering participation and in activating the dynamics of reconsideration of the local reality: the learning context, the content and the pedagogy.
The fi rst section offers an analysis of the context, including the way in which Tostan negotiated access to the village, the role of the facilita- tor and participants’ expectations. Tostan’s negotiation of access con- tributed to there being little resistance to the programme, and avoided misunderstandings or false representations of how the village would benefi t from the programme. The selection of the facilitator (who shared the ethnic background of the community but was an outsider) had stra- tegic importance for the success of the programme. And participants’ expectations were important because they ensured their consistent par- ticipation in the classes.
In the second part of the chapter I look at the pedagogical strate- gies used in the class and analyse their Freirian nature and their being modelled through an experiential pedagogy. The facilitator engaged participants in discussions about their local reality and asked them to engage in representation of their reality through sketches, poems and songs. I suggest that, starting from their local reality, participants could develop their own understanding of the content exposed and could engage in a critical dialogue concerning their experiences of that reality. The dialogic process was structured as democratic and was facilitated in the local traditional language of the rural community. Both democratic participation and the use of the participants’ mother tongue played a
key role in fostering contextualisation and adoption of human rights practices.
Next, in the third section, I analyse the curriculum of the Kobi 1, dividing it into three parts. The fi rst part (the introductory sessions) contributed to triggering participation and unity by fostering the nature of the class as a CoP. In the second group of sessions (the sessions on democracy), participants envisioned possible different alternatives to their political and social status quo. The fi nal (and bigger) group of sessions (the human rights sessions) engaged participants in analys- ing their local reality from a human rights perspective. As the sessions unfolded, human rights became a tool to enable critical analysis of local practices that emerged as key themes from participants’ discussions; I explore how they reifi ed the abstract human rights knowledge in their daily lives and explored local understandings of it.
The fourth section of this chapter explores resistances to the pro- gramme and offers possible explanations of the reasons behind the lack of demonstrations of such resistance in the data. It is important to make sense of the low level of resistance to understand what in the programme built consensus at community level that then might have facilitated the process by which participants shared their views and perspectives with non-participants.
In the concluding section, arguments are linked together and I suggest that the different components of the programme contributed to a shift in participants’ outlooks, which will itself be analysed in the next chapter.
THE LEARNING CONTEXT Accessing Galle Toubaaco
As stated by the NGO’s staff members interviewed in Dakar, in Novem- ber 2009 Tostan identifi ed Galle Toubaaco as a potential community to participate in the education programme under the requirements of the funding body UNICEF. UNICEF requested Tostan select for its three- year CEP rural communities where child-harming practices (such as FGC, CFM or poor care of children’s hygiene) were likely to be in place. Tostan decided to target Ful e communities, since precedent literature and baseline studies suggested that they would satisfy similar criteria. The village’s potential for the organised diffusion7 of the knowledge
Toubaaco satisfi ed all these criteria and was therefore approached by representatives of the NGO who offered the possibility of participating in the Tostan programme.
Following what they knew to be traditional lines of authority, Tostan negotiated access in Galle Toubaaco with the Imam, the vil- lage chief and the local elders. According to both local staff and vil- lage authorities, Tostan’s representatives explained the content of the programme, that everyone in the community would be invited to par- ticipate, and that the community would be responsible for the facilita- tor’s food and accommodation. Tostan also explained that the Kobi 1 part of the programme, which included the HRE classes, would last four months and would then be followed by the other components of Tostan’s educational programme (problem solving, health, hygiene, literacy and numeracy, amongst others) in the following three years. Finally, Tostan offi cers informed authorities that two different classes would be held: one for community members over 21 years of age and one for those under that age. Tostan’s age differentiation strat- egy responded to traditional forms of respect for the elders common to different ethnicities in Senegal (and particularly relevant to Ful e communities). These forms of respect regulated norms of interaction among community members and could have hindered young people’s participation in the classes because young men are not supposed to contradict an older man.
Tostan requested community members take care of building the hut that would host the classes, which they did well before the beginning of the programme. The classroom had not been used for any other pur- pose and would not exist without the Tostan programme. Its presence primed a change in the routine of the village. According to informants, the new class contributed to generating talk about the programme to be and, possibly, it also contributed to the raising of individual and public hopes on what the classes could bring to the community, so that when the HRE classes started, participants had already formulated some expectations of them. Aisata Ba, for instance, commented about the hut that would host the class by saying: ‘[People have been talking about the classroom because] We have waited for this kind of programme for a long time and now that it’s here we hope it will help develop our vil- lage in the future’ [S1I10AIB ]. Informants understood the existence of the class as a fi rst sign of a change in the village. The second sign was community members’ participation in the classes. Everyone could see
people leaving their huts to join the classes. To informants, seeing simi- lar differences in the village opened up the possibility for more change to come:
What’s going to help the village become as you describe it?
Tostan can help; since they got here, there have been lots of changes already. Now women, men, girls and boys are going to school and that was not happening before. [S1I12HB ]
Classes started on Monday, 12 April 2010 and would normally run three times a week from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The Facilitator: An In/Outsider Role in the Community and the Class
For effective problem-posing education to generate processes of critical reconsideration of local realities, it is of the utmost importance for the educator to be a native speaker of the same language as the learners; that is, to be aware of how learners construct the world around them and their world of learning (Freire 1970). Freire argued that creating the world is naming it; the ways people make sense of the world together and express their understandings of it through their language are inex- tricably correlated.
For the entire duration of the course, participants would have the same facilitator: Kebe, a 40-year-old man originally from Fouta Toro, the Northern Fulfulde-speaking Tukuloor part of the country. Consistent with Tostan’s requirements, Kebe both shared the ethnic background of the local community members and was born and raised in a fairly distant community. According to the NGO’s headquarters staff, Tostan required facilitators and participants to be part of the same ethnic group to ensure that facilitators would have the necessary background to fully make sense of the community’s understandings of the world and the classes. On the other hand, Tostan employed outsider facilitators so that they would be able to construct with participants an educational and authoritative role without having to deal with participants’ pre-existing biases or with the facilitator’s past actions or behaviours that would be inconsistent with the content of the programme. Kebe’s external origin seems consistent to transformative education practices with regard to two aspects.
First, the facilitator might have confl icts of interest that would lead his educative action in one direction or another. As seen earlier, the
Freirian educator gives to participants the means to rename their real- ity, rather than tools to shape their views over his. The facilitator’s con- fl ict of interest might shift the focus of the educational action: from fostering participants’ cooperation towards what they defi ne as a better community, to aiming for the facilitator’s vision of a better community that he has developed in the local community. Of course, this argument could also be raised with regard to outsiders entering the community: this dynamic is also one of approach and is not limited to the ontologi- cal characteristics of the educator. However, the facilitator’s ‘outsider- ness’ contributed to reducing the risks related to, using Freire’s (1970) words, the educator ‘fi lling’ the world into participants, controlling and giving direction to the educational process rather than helping par- ticipants discover what is inside them and remake sense of the world around them together.
Second, Kebe’s extraneousness to the community of destination helped him see himself as a learner, rather than a teacher: new people and relations created a learning challenge: ‘Here I am like you – Kebe told me today – everything is new to me and I have to learn every- thing’ [Diary, 28.03.2010]. Kebe seemed to possess, in his approach to the classes, the humility and availability to listen that are key in prob- lem-posing education. His approach as learner, rather than ‘teacher’, resonated with the role that educators have in liberating processes of education: one of critical educator.
Tostan recruited Kebe in 2007 and employed him elsewhere in the country in the period 2007–10. In 2010, then, he was included in the roster of the facilitators working on Tostan’s new UNICEF-founded CEP and participated in the one-week training course on the Kobi 1 held in Kaolack with the other facilitators working in the region. According to Tostan’s local training team, the course aimed at making facilitators familiar with the fi rst three months of the programme. Also, the training discussed with facilitators the degree to which they would be allowed to adapt the programme to their own abilities and participants’ needs, and the educational approach that facilitators should adopt (participant-cen- tred, fl exible, interactive and respectful of the dignity of all participants). At the end of the training, each facilitator was paired with a village. Kebe was assigned to Galle Toubaaco: his intention to collaborate in the pres- ent research was then explored; he agreed to participate and negotiated access to the classes that he would run in Galle Toubaaco.
Kebe moved to Galle Toubaaco in March 2010. He earned the respect of the community relatively quickly. He was held in repute
alongside the intellectuels of the village (as his sitting position during the observed village meetings, on a chair beside the elders, suggested). Community members, independently of their participation or not in the classes, showed high consideration of Kebe’s education and his ability to transform that knowledge into a concrete benefi t, that is, a job as a teacher with Tostan. This esteem allowed him to access hidden and visible power mechanisms in place in the community: Kebe could suggest topics to be discussed during village meetings and could infl u- ence the community’s decisions on those or other topics. Being aware of the power he could have in infl uencing the community’s political decisions, he consciously refused to give it when members asked for his opinion on what they should do. After one of the meetings observed, when asked about the reasons for refraining from doing so, he replied by saying: ‘It’s their village, not mine; they have to take the decisions, not me’ [Diary, 10.04.2010]. Yet, during the meetings or other informal moments, he reminded participants of the discussions that they had in class as, for instance, when suggesting the existence of democratic voting as a means to make decisions. In that specifi c case, participating members explained to non-participants the reasons explored together in class and tried to convince them of the benefi t that came from vot- ing. Thereafter, in the other observed meetings, the rural community replaced tacit consent with a show of hands as the standard decision- making procedure.
Kebe made various efforts to respect community members’ deci- sional autonomy. He did not take their place by telling them what they should do or offering rewards for doing as he suggested. Rather, he showed participants ways of analysing alternatives to their reality and primed the results of their discussions in their daily life (when commu- nity members asked his advice about the decisions they were taking). In doing so, possibly following the NGO’s instructions given during the training, Kebe seemed to consider community members as exclusively responsible for giving direction to their community’s development. His role, then, was to be that of an indirect helper. In class, his presence created a new audience for speech. He could elicit participants’ discus- sions, without which the Tostan programme could not work. He could generate the dialogue by being a kind human being towards partici- pants, who were entering into education for the fi rst time.
The observed facilitator–participants and facilitator–community relations were in line with the basic principles of problem-posing human rights education: indirect, non-intrusive and participant-centred.
However, on a few occasions, Kebe’s role in the class and in the commu- nity diverged from the indirect approach he adopted in other moments:
Session 12, young people. Today Kebe looks very tired. I don’t think he prepared for the class as he usually does. It’s very hot outside; everyone seems to be suffering from the incredible heat. As he did in other classes, Kebe asks participants to mix amongst different genders, trying to break norms of segregation in the class. The fi rst who has to move is AB, who after being asked repeatedly to move, eventually stands up, in silence, slowly, and looking seriously at the ground. He changes place unhurriedly, shaking his head, annoyed. His sunglasses and hat on, he fi nally sits amongst the girls. [. . .] The class starts; there is not much playing today. Kebe is doing much of the talking and asking participants from time to time their opinion. Their answers are limited to choral ‘yes’. [. . .] It’s the fi nal summary: Kebe asks participants to summarise. The class ends. [Diary, 16.04.2010]
In the class above, Kebe’s approach was more direct and non- participative than usual. Yet he used the drawings and tried to involve participants in the discussion and, possibly, participants’ reticence motivated him to do most of the talking.
In Freirian terms, the tendency of the class to assign to the educator the role of talker must be deconstructed by the educator. The oppressed look to authority to be told what they need to do or say (similarly to what Belenky et al. 1986 argued regarding the silent women). The edu- cator can be seduced by that power since he does not have to struggle to obtain it: the oppressed spontaneously offer it to him. In doing all the talking, Kebe deviated from the very core of problem-posing educa- tion: the importance of a critical dialogue. In a fruitful critical dialogue, educators and students create the truth together. When he refuses the seduction of the power that the class offers to him, the educator does an act of real love. When he accepts it, it is an act of domination; while love generates freedom, domination generates oppression (Freire 1970). However, the training received and Tostan’s facilitator’s manual provided Kebe with a constant benchmark against which he could evaluate his educational practices. Tostan’s requirements and periodic evaluations ensured that Kebe’s pedagogical strategies were suffi ciently consistent with the Freirian model for participants to develop critical
analysis of their reality, but they were not always in line with the prin- ciple expressed by Tostan’s general educational approach.
On another occasion, Kebe had to decide either to hold a class with the majority of the participants, or to respect a woman’s decision to participate in a baptism on a normal class day:
Last week, after having obtained Kebe’s permission, Fatou Diallo publicly invited in class all participants (and more generally all members) to the baptism of her nephew, to be held next Wednesday. A part of the village, however, didn’t want to partici- pate in the celebration. Fatou told me in an interview that they were in confl ict with one of her close relatives (Ndene, her cousin). Yesterday (Wednesday), many participants went to the class as usual. Kebe was resting at home. He knew that a baptism was going on that day and that therefore nobody would be in class. He was called by participants to hold the class anyway. Arriving in class he saw a large number of people willing to attend class as normal. He decided that, since the majority of the class was pres- ent, it would be fair to hold the class. [Diary, 18.05.2010]
It is diffi cult to make sense of Kebe’s decision to hold the class anyway that day. His decision might then be motivated by the desire to positively reinforce a democratic attitude. In this example, as in some others, what could be perceived as deviant by an outsider could possibly have coher- ence from a local understanding of it.
Fatou showed sadness for community members’ decision to go to class: we had already learned about human rights and about discrimina- tion before the baptism but the women continued to discriminate anyway and decided not to go to the baptism. Before the baptism the teacher said there would be no class because of the event, so he will give everyone a chance to attend the baptism. All of the women decided to show up at class anyway instead of going to the bap- tism so the teacher taught the class. I went to the teacher and told him they violated the human rights rules but the teacher said the