[MUSIC] Hi. I'm here for a different kind of video this week. We are going to be talking with a group of students at Wesleyan University. About their participation in activism, and efforts to change the world or change the neighborhood or change the environment. We're going to reflect a little bit about how our experience as students in this case and as a teacher. How that intersects with our role as citizens and as People who are responding to change, and, and sometimes making change. So I'm going to ask my colleagues here at Wesleyan to introduce themselves. >> My name is Ari. I'm from Newton, Massachusetts, and I study anthropology at Wesleyan University. >> Hello everybody. My name is Bulelani Jili. But I generally go by Jils on campus. I'm a CSS and econ double-major and I'm from South Africa. >> I'm Rebecca. I'm from Philadelphia, and I'm an English major. >> My name is Matt Donahue, I'm a current senior, double majoring in psychology and neuroscience, and I'm from Canterbury, Connecticut, which is a short hour outside of Middletown. >> Well thank you all for getting together with me today. It's the beginning of the, Winter semester at Wesleyan, we're just about to get underway, so these students have come back recently from very recently, minutes ago in some cases from, from their break, and one of the things we, we've been studying in the context of this course is How education is related to social change and how education is related to activism and I wonder as, as Wesleyan students if you'd each say a little bit about what kinds of activities you participate in that are not. So what you do as a student but have some impact on the world around you. Who would like to start? >> Well, particularly in fact it kind of corroborates with here is that me and [UNKNOWN] within our freshman year decided to start our own kind of like student group, which is called Middletown Potluck, which pretty much is a student group that was initially catered. To try and get the community to collaborate, try and engage the community together to kind of try and thrust through means of social change, we pretty much stage potlucks. Where we invited Wesleyan students, Middletown residences in order to break bread, to kind of like, facilitate discussions on particular imperative kind of issues. Within the community and within the kind of like wider sense of, of societies. So that really kind of was done in the hopes that by getting a number of people within the room, and within involved in the discussion. Somehow it will spur on change however that's not necessarily the case. Sometimes even when you give people the necessary information. About particular pressing issues, business and instigate for change. >> The last one we hosted at the end of last semester was about hunger and homelessness in Middletown and it was trying to combat this like, thing Jils was talking about where you get people interested in a issue but you find it really difficult to kind of concritize, all that Knowledge and passionate to an action. And so, we had as like a really explicit goal of the dinner, you know, we all sat around in a circle. There's probably like 60, 70 people who stayed for the discussion. And we're like, one thing, we have to commit to one thing before we leave this room, and it was like really, really difficult, and we. Like we committed to something which was actually like getting lockers for some of the homeless population here, because they don't have anywhere to keep their personal property and so it routinely gets stolen, either by the police or by, other people in the community. But like, it was just so, difficult trying to direct the flow of conversation towards one concrete goal and I don't know, that's one of our experiences I guess with student group on campus trying to team up with the community. >> How about you guys? Are d, you involved in things that aim to have an impact on campus or, or. >> Yeah, both actually. So since my time here I've been involved with the north end action team and their tutoring program. So freshman year, I tutored at Woodrow Wilson Middle School, and also with Northern Action Team with a local teenager who left school due to bullying. So I tutored her for an entire year while she was out of school and continued to be involved with the Northern Action Team on sort of a local level. And then junior year I start working with Brighter Dawns, which is a Wesleyan funded non profit that seeks to improve slum conditions in Bangladesh. >> Right. >> Particularly looking at health care and water and sanitation problems. >> Uh-huh. >> So I've been working with them and sort of fundraisers on campus. And those types of activities on sort of a local level while looking at how local action can generate global change. >> Rebecca? >> I've done a little bit of tutoring also. >> And when you're doing tutoring, how do you we were talking a little bit about this before. Before we turn the cameras on. When you're doing tutoring, how, how do you measure success? So if you're tutoring a, a kid, how do you, what do you, what, how do you know it's going well or not? >> I don't know if you always do, actually. I think sometimes you just have to wait it out, over a period of time before you really see anything because, sometimes you know, your kid forgets. >> Yeah. >> And then you have to remind him and, but, I think it takes a little time and, as we sort of grow to like connect. >> Mmhm >> With your tutee. >> Mm-hm. >> Is that the right word? >> Yeah. >> Even just like getting to know them, and they sort of start to trust you. >> So building trust and, and, getting, building a relationship is, is part of what you hope happens in tutoring. It's not just getting a certain number of those points on a test, you know, right? Yeah. When you tutor someone who has left school for, say, bullying or other reasons, what, what, again, what's your goal there? Like, what are your, what are your. >> I'd say one of the hardest issues we had to tackle was confidence. >> Uh-huh. >> Ad so I was teaching her all of her courses. So English, Mathematics, History, Science. And tutoring her for only about eight to ten hours a week, because that's all my schedule could really afford. So really figuring out, okay, how are we going to make eight hours? Productive. >> Mm-hm. >> And so he spent a decent amount of time working on public speaking, and sort of doing some community service projects with a couple of non-profits on Main Street. >> Mm-hm. >> The Green Street Art Center and the Buttonwood Tree. And I thought that was a good way to sort of get her out talking to people. >> Yep. >> And engaging in a different way than just reading a text book. >> Yeah. >> Or other readings that were assigned for her grade level. And so that's one issue that I found a little bit difficult to tackle and as a college freshmen. >> Yeah. >> [LAUGH] who had his own adjustment. Yeah. >> To deal with at Wesleyan. So I think that's, that was one of the outcomes I was really looking for was, her engagement in the community outside of the north end action teams office. [CROSSTALK] >> Mm-hm. >> Other than that I guess results were really measured at the end of the experience not really throughout. >> Mm-hm. >> So most of the time, I didn't really spend a lot of my efforts grading her assignments other than just providing constructive feedback on her writing and mathematics. She got the answer wrong, explaining that. >> Mm-hm. >> But I wouldn't say I assigned her letter grades. And after the year, she was promoted to the next grade level. >> There you go. >> So I feel like that did speak to some level of success in my tutoring with her. I think a lot of it is accounted to, just the people she had in her life outside of school. >> Yeah. >> And so just her, her grandparents, who also were helping her with her homework and assignments and the community members who were supportive in helping her work on a couple of community projects. I think it's, it's a matter of I don't think test scores really, are, are the answer when it comes to that type of scenario. >> Yeah. So just in that, building confidence and building trust in both of your examples of tutoring is important. And I would guess in the, the pot luck example too, too, one of the things you hope happens is that, if people come to more than one of these, it, it becomes It becomes a group they feel they belong to. Is that, would that be accurate? In other words they feel some trust in one another, or a confidence in their common endeavour? >> Well, I, I feel as if one of the really pressing ideas around the community potluck is that there is a sense of communal feel and that, that the individual themselves is not kind of left to. To they own kind of problems. Particularly if their systematic formula problems that they're facing. So, problems that are within the community, and so therefore not the only. They're not only responsible for it themselves, and so therefore taking the burden to kind of like address the issue, on they own hierarchic level, and so trying to get the community active, kind of does rely on the sense community within people, and the sense of I guess, civil religion. >> Mm-hm. >> And so yeah. I've always wanted, we've have always pushed for the idea of a sense of community. That's why we kind of initiated the ideal food is that like. >> Yeah >> Breaking bread together in the hopes to inspire people. >> So you have some experience in this regard as well, right? >> Yeah, well just to give a little context to the discussion you referenced we were having before off camera, you just went down to the White House to talk about access to a college education, and expanding access to that. And Jils and I were talking about if we can conceptualize a certain kind of education reform or learning reform, to put in the actual, active verb as opposed to the structure, noun sort of thing. That is maybe outside just attaining a college education, because we were talking about how that, like, poses a standard to which we think everyone should aspire, should aspire to have a college education. You pointed out, some very good material benefits of having a college education. But I guess we were talking about other conceptions of like, learning communities that didn't have as their end point a college education. Or material wealth, but other other social goods, community building, artistic, more holistic things. >> Mm-hm. The kind of things that you were doing with your students, that weren't just about, you know, Pushing around to the next grade level, although that was probably a, a good ancillary benefit but it was also about building confidence, public speaking and things like that. We were talking before, I was just in Mexico and Southern, Southeastern Mexico, in Chiapas had an incredible opportunity to go visit these Zapatista communities there. Which I was very privileged to be able to, participate in, and seeing how they took autonomy over their schools, and kind of taught their kids, you know, it, with no goal towards having a college education. But they still had these institutions of learning that were about serving the needs of the community. >> One of the, one of the topics in this course is, as you all know is poverty and development, and the, the, the, debates around what kind of economic development could be stimulated in areas of the world where there are high rates of extreme poverty. because as, as you all know, extreme poverty is not evenly distributed across the globe and now there's a, there's very lively debates now about whether foreign aid is actually doing any good. Whether it's a form of neo-colonialism or paternalism, or whether we need much more scientifically structured interventions or more grass-roots, cultivation. And I wondered if in your studies at Wesleyan or in your in your thinking as, about politics wha, what you think about these debates. About how when we're sitting in a you know, in a very comfortable university office here. How you think about our responsibility, in other pa, for other parts of the world, where there is extreme poverty, prevalence of diseases that we know how to cure, but aren't being cured in those areas. What claim does this have on, on your attention, and on your care? >> I think the overarching goal for all people interested in taking a course on how to change the world is to have, help people like, live better lives. Or Empower people to live better lives and afford them the dignity to be able to do so, and so economic development poses like a very specific model of how to do that. We want to give people allow people to earn an income such that they can buy the necessities of their daily life. But it's important for me to recognize one thing I've learned at Wesleyan, is like how that measures its own progress on its own standards. So Nike can go into, a south-east Asian coun country, where they didn't have jobs before, and say oh they were making $0, now they're making $2 a day. Well it's not necessarily as if those people weren't eating yesterday, might they had different modes of living and. I mean this was like a historical progression to capitalism, to take like, a subsistence farming population and turn them into an urban working class. So it's not that all economic development, you know initiatives are bunk. But just recognizing that what model of like, life they put forth to which some people can voluntarily a seed, but which often, especially in these developing nations, is totally imposed and not really come forward with the grass roots support that like, really should be the enervating spirit of, of social change. >> I think for me particularly, if I'm going to kind of stem with the notions of the democratical structures, that we're realizing that particularly with the democracy piece theories, that pretty much the progression of a democracy and the progression of the capitalist structure somehow an incrementation really of. Of economic growth. So the more, the larger, the country's GDP, the better off these people are, which is kind of like what R.E.'s is echoing, is that we're not necessarily taking to account what people's interests are within that country. And that maybe they, the measurement of quality of life or how they live is in a completely different kind of standard, and that is not necessarily measured on the incrementation of wealth or, or, or what we seem or value as means of, of living. And so, for me, it's more, but, it's, it's really far more, less about countries giving them foreign aids that way we can watch them, we can watch their economies grow, but it's more about, letting, the, the, pretty much letting the victims speak. So, kind of the notion is that, let the people who suffer, voice that concerns which is kind of like Theodore, it's kind of like that in the really kind like informs us on this idea that, by allowing the third world or whichever particular country that we are most concerned with. Tell us what are there concerns, rather than pressing our own kind of concerns onto them. And making, making the assumption that progress is, this is how progress looks like, this is how you develop, this is how you should do things. >> How about you guys? In what ways have you, the existence of, of poverty and global health challenges that come across your horizon here, as students. Rebecca you want to say something about that? >> yeah, it was in Honduras a few years ago on a service trip. And well like, the very first and most repeated things that they would say is you have to develop the idea for the project with the other kids and with the other. Adults who are in the community, and it has to be their project and they have to be the ones to, to figure out what they want. And so, the big thing was like, you're just there to, or I was supposed to be there just to put in terms that the, like, the grant and the donors. >> Mm-hm. >> Would understand. >> Right. >> But you were supposed to, to, you can only do that by really listening to what the, the people on the ground needed and, and, and. >> Yeah. >> And listening to their aspirations. >> Yeah. >> Mm-hm. >> So, I mean, we eventually developed a soccer field, but it [LAUGH] you had to, like go out and, find all these people, because everyone had their own opinion of, of what it was that they needed. And, everyone had their own, like particular agenda. >> Mm-hm. >> And so you had to actually talk with everybody, and figure out as whole, what was going on. And then throw out ideas, and then have them throw ideas back, and figure out something that actually, worked. >> Mm-hm. How about you, Matt? >> Yeah. I'm uncertain I can speak as much to international relief, because I haven't been on any service project. I actually didn't study abroad, either. But on a local level, my freshman year, and then in subsequent years, I worked with a professor here with her class, Middleton Arts and Social Justice. >> Uh-huh. >> And Community Development. We won't tattle. But working with local non-profit organizations in our freshman year the idea of the classes working on a final project with one of the partner organizations. Ranging from a local art centre to the North End Action Team which is a grass-roots organization that's all about empowering people in the North End which is, Middletown's poorest sector. >> So what I noticed through the class was, and the focus was a lot on what the student could do for the community, not what the community could do for the student. So going in and it did seem a little bit paternalistic, or, it really depended on the student's own academic interest, or interests outside of the classroom. So let's say for example, one of my classmates is an artist, stained glass and mural pieces. Pitched a project for a mural to an organization that focused largely on activism in the community. What ended up happening is it sort of came from an interesting place, from our Ivory tower, didn't really want to put a strain on the relations and the, the organization ended up picking up the project and focused on this mural. When it wasn't really a mission driven project. >> Mm-hm. >> Just something we worked on in the next couple of years, I ended up joining Professor Mignon as her TA. As working on sort of, collaborations within the community, like you're speaking to, and sort of surveying, well what do they really need? Or want or what do they envision as change in their community thats productive in some sense. Maybe a mural isn't what they're looking for. >> Mm-hm. >> And so, so something we really worked on was sending out surveys to the community organizations and looking at the programming they're already offering. >> Mm-hm. >> And then partnering with that and offering our, our resources as students to expand those programs. [BLANK_AUDIO] I mean as far as like International endeavors go I have worked with Brighter Dawn with their in water solutions and something that we, we struggle with is how do we create a dialogue on campus or a dialogue in Middletown? They can really speak to the issues that they're having in Bangladesh. When we can't have a Skype call with someone that, one of our community held officers for example, so its something that we think about a lot, but I think its a very difficult issue to broach. Yeah, this is kind of put a few different times in our conversation is that, on, on the one hand we don't want to employ or deploy our concern in a paternalistic, heavy handed way. We want to listen to the voices of those people whose needs we, we think we'd want to meet. We want to have them articulate, but their aspirations were there, their, their needs on the other hand it's so easy to be deaf to these voices at all, right? So, so [UNKNOWN] raising money each year lets say at Wesleyan to do it's it's grid work in Bangladesh. On the other hand it's it's you know, there's something it, it can be something like all the good Americans coming to Bangladesh. Are they becoming paternalistic, I guess that's eh, you're coming from a place of relative privilege and you could just sit back on your privilege and do nothing. Right? And it won't be paternalistic it'll just be cruel, but but when you feel this is this moral or political claim on you. How do you cross over these borders without becoming paternalistic I guess is the questions. Can you be a, an, an activist that helps people in need without becoming part of the problem through being paternalistic or authoritarian. >> I think from the this is a really, is a really pressing kind of question. And when I think of this I kind of think of, apartheid, South Africa, ha, I'm thinking of Steve Bico, Black consciousness, and initially the, the, the physical fight against apartheid, we're looking at about 1969. It was really kind of like the the, the, pretty much apartheid at its, at its meanest publicity we say and looking at how pretty much all the particular movements against apartheid. For the black movement were pretty much completely suppressed where I, the NCA and other particular movements by that, by that time were completely jailed. Eh, and the only thing more present for us were white liberal students tending colleges, and they were trying to, pretty much, lead the movement. However, you're very particularly very conscious that when they were trying to lead the movement, they were addressing the apartheid system on particular laws that,that people of African decent weren't particularly concerned with. And it literally took the notion of black consciousness, really kind of stemming from Duboise's kind of like double consciousness, is that people, that these people should have insight, on their own particular issues. >> Yes. >> That we shouldn't necessarily assume. And so from there, we the idea of black consciousness then was really a call for people who are oppressed to formulate their own movement, and those who, who want to help them within a system, must function under their own cause. So it's pretty much, let's, let the, let the blacks lead their own fight. >> Mm-hm. >> And you can help us with this movement. And I think That then address in all kinds of spheres that we must allow people to lead their own lives. >> This is, this is a great example let me give you, for, for me is a really hard case. We read about it in this class, we read about just last we that what [INAUDIBLE] calls a case of the missing women. That is, his shown through demographic analysis that, there are millions of women missing from the world that is in especially in Indian China, and, and in east and south Asia. That is, they are either selectively aborted, or and this is very troubling in recent studies, that young girls are just not cared for in their families. In the same way young boys are cared for and so they just die earlier and you can see very clearly their percentage of women to men should be in a society and in in certain states in India, it's different from others, but across India and China for example. There are millions of women whose lives either never started or were cut short, now, he points this out, it's clearly a cultural problem that these women aren't complaining that they're not alive, right? And in fact, mothers often have expressed a preference for boys, and so now with ultrasounds and other kinds of technologies, they can selectively abort, their pregnancies when it's a female. Foetus, how do you initiate change in what seems like something dramatically unjust, I guess because of universal codes, but in these areas seem like a natural preference for boys? Any ideas of where you would start? Tough question. >> It's a tough question. >> I would say that like [CROSSTALK] it's a good one; it's a really good one, and if we're thinking about it just from the outside, we'd had to make a moral judgment one way or the other. But for me, in terms of practically, since there are a million and plus more like social justice issues like to kind of concern myself with. >> Yeah. >> Just in terms of the community where I come from, where I live, like, I mean, I think that like, if there is to be a cultural change within these communities which seems imperative from what you just described like, I totally would support it. But like, I don't have any standing to really. >> Yeah. >> Initiate that. >> Yeah. >> You know? So meanwhile in Middletown you know, there are people who are like, you know, homeless and not receiving like, vibrant educations, Right. >> Things like that. So >> That you can act locally. >> Act locally. Yeah. And, and that, and that way, you know, I mean, you see this all the time, right, in terms of like white liberals or even conservatives trying to go and impose kind of like feminism on what they see as like the backward Muslim world, and this leads to a whole lot of like soft imperialism there. And it's not that, you know, I, you can object to feminism one way or the other, but it's are the voices coming from. Can you really effectively reform communities from the outside, saying come listen to us, we have the wisdom and we can just, you guys can just apply it, or need that empowerment really come from the affected communities themselves? And think about all the issues that you're ignoring while simultaneously trying to you know, to do this thing that is. >> Uh-huh. >> Considered the universal good. [BLANK_AUDIO]
