‘Funds of knowledge’ and Education

In the foreword to Pedagogy of the Oppressed Richard Shaull writes that education is a subversive factor. Historically speaking, education has been the fundamental tool of rebellion, and in more polite terms, of upward social mobility. Education is often termed an equalizer between individuals of different backgrounds. This is in line with bell hooks’ description of education as an entity that is both healing and wholesome. She argues that the fundamental principles of education lie in “empowerment, liberation, transcendence [and in] renewing the vitality of life”. While this, indeed, is the goal, there is a hiatus: “the resources needed to reach that horizon, long imagined as infinite, are, in fact, finite”.

“Funds of knowledge”, a concept put forward by Moll et al. (1992) which centres on the idea that families, especially working-class families, have a fund of knowledge developed via their lived experiences, which can then be used in the formal teaching of the young. It has been further developed to note that these funds may then lend to a formation of social networks where an exchange of funds of knowledge among families occur, forming a broader household economy (nonmonetary). In a world where the resources available are finite, it stands to reason, then, that one-size-fits-all approach that has been taken to education will be neither feasible nor sustainable in the long-run. Therefore, this essay combines the concept of funds of knowledge with Rappleye and Komatsu’s (2020) “Finite futures” concept to argue that utilizing funds of knowledge in communities as a means of schooling and education is not only a sustainable model of learning, but an effective one in the face of finite nature of natural resources.

As expounded by many in the academia, neoliberalism in education has created enormous pressure to serve economic goals, rendering cultural goals and context-specific mechanisms to near-extinction. Due to the power disparity that exists between the Global North and the South, this individualistic ontology of centring self that is at the heart of neoliberal capitalism has become a goal to aspire in the Global South. However, these aspirations have been borne by a Western enlightenment ideology that has increasingly shown less-than-perfect results in the Global South, where the sense of individual is community-based as opposed to individualistic. Rappleye and Komatsu (2020) elaborate this under four distinct elements:

• Time: Arguing that the current conceptualisation of time is a colonial construct furthered by neo-liberal capitalist demands of productivity. With literature supporting the notion that time was one of the concepts used by colonisers to label the colonised as lazy, regressive, and primitive, Finite Futures attempt to decolonize the concept of time. This includes questioning the notions of linear time, of “being lazy”, and advocating for a slowing down and highlighting components of Eastern philosophies that stress the importance of being still and quietness.
• Space: With colonisation, the notion of (a learning) space became one that is homogenous, infinite, and global. The trend one sees in the South Asian region now, where young adults move to urban areas from villages seeking better lifestyles is also testimony to the disconnect that has appeared between the individual and the space they occupy. Thus, there appears to be an illusion that space is universal, its features and its relationships are universal as opposed to the spatial consciousness that is sensitive and alert to its environment. The framing attempts to reconstruct the modern notion of homogenous global space, and revise the grammar of spatiality.
• Other: The neo-colonial powers push the role of the other to the periphery in its manifestation in education. The simplest example of this would be the student-centred learning techniques, which are created for an individual ontology. The Global South, historically, is communal in its existence. This relegation of the other to a secondary role not only resists learning from the other, but could be one of the reasons behind strong ethnonational tensions that are emerging in the region. The recentering of the other – without which, incidentally, the self cannot exist – challenges the neoliberal capitalist ideologies.
• Self: The framing argues that the current idea of Self, which stems from Western enlightenment is fixed; that it is this assumption of fixed nature of self that prevents a learner from learning. It also challenges the notion of Truth, highlighting that once, especially in Eastern philosophies, the idea of Truth is context contingent. It calls for a decentralising of individualism, challenging neo-liberal ideas of education, and calls for a transgenerational learning model (which has parallels to pre-colonial systems of education).

It seems unreasonable to approach school education as a homogenized entity when those subject to its services – the learners – are anything but homogenous. This manifests in learning content as well as in pedagogies of the classroom. Assuming that a learner-centric approach which isolates a learner, especially one from the working class, who is accustomed to communal learning seems counter-intuitive. Demanding a child that is accustomed to learning in motion, oscillating between spaces while their mind absorbs material to sit still in a classroom for 6 hours seems a sure way to ensure that the learning is hindered, not encouraged. What cements the need for alternative modes of teaching-learning, a different understanding of what schooling is, is not merely the lack of progress in students in school actually learning (World Bank’s Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals, 2020 notes that “despite high enrolment rates, many students are not learning); it is also evident in the success stories of non-traditional modes of schooling from Bangladesh and Egypt. By tapping into the funds of knowledge and the ideologies of the communities, learning – thus, schooling – has been made effective.

BRAC boat schools in Bangladesh is an instance where funds of knowledge have been used to maximum effect. Using the water vessels which are a traditional mode of transportation in the Bengal delta, the BRAC schools incorporated a base element of the community lifestyle into the concept of school. It now boasts the largest secular education system in the world with 10 million local students. One of their key highlights is a flexible school scheduling that caters to student needs. This reduces the likelihood of students dropping out or missing out on key parts of learning. In addition to the nature of the school, the school administration is locally recruited, thus ensuring that the community – thereby, the community’s funds of knowledge play a central role in the way school functions. They also have two and a half hours of extra-curricular community activities after school, which makes sure that the link between the learner and the community is sustained. Instead of taking the child out of the community and teaching a curriculum that may seem too abstract and out-of-touch with the lived realities of the students, BRAC schools capitalise on the available community funds of knowledge. The issue with the existing (popular) model of schooling is that it assumes all learners are the same, when it is not so. By forcing them to conform to a mould, often a Western enlightenment mould that is struggling to find success in the Global South, learning becomes alien and tedious to the learner. This has led to the emergence of multiple small projects, especially in the Global South, that incorporates the community and their funds of knowledge in alternative forms of schooling. As illustrated above, this model of learning is not only feasible, but quite successful. It requires the administrators and the policy makes to step out of the box, though. However, as Rappleye and Komatsu (2020) have stated, this might soon become a necessity and not a preference. Covid19 has emphasised that we cannot approach teaching the same way at all parts of the world, or in all parts of the country. Community involvement, community dependence, and more customized modes of learning is the one option that approaches the future as it truly is: one where resources are fast depleting. Thus, educators need to take the changing nature of the world into account and capitalise on existing funds of knowledge for successful teaching-learning experiences.