When I took the shuttle bus between Delhi International and Domestic terminals I caught a glimpse of the tail-fins of many Kingfisher planes exposed above a tall concrete wall, looking like gravestone markers across an expanse of calm light blue endlessness that was the clear India sky.
I'll have to ask someone, or many people, what their views are on the seeming demise of what I had thought to be a really nice airline with comfortable and good service and a good attitude to everything that their brand touched.
Is there some element of a cautionary tale to all who have even the slightest tendency to envision how money might roll into town all guns blazing without really having such a firm grasp not only on those 45s of their Western myth-vision but also on the reality of whatever situation they're riding into whether it be a highly complex phenomenon like moving people through the skies or the simple, straightforward, wondrous chaos of transversing spaces of various ways to accept, reject, question, posit, share or shun education?
I spoke to a woman in the airport about children in India. She told me that many children do not get the chance to go to school because parents want them to work in their family businesses and thus see education as a threat. I asked her if that was still largely true, meaning, is it something that is still quite common? Yes, she said, it's quite common still. She seemed well-educated and seemed disheartened by what she was telling me. I wondered if there are activities that are seeking to bridge this mindset towards making these parents aware of alternative possibilities. Could there be some intermediate reality, where a child's introduction to education might actually help the family business? Could there be a dynamic where a guns blazing approach has no direct bearing on the potential for positive outcomes, but where positive outcomes nevertheless emerge and thrive? I'm sure that there are many people asking these same questions, many people and organizations exploring this landscape of so many intertwining hopes and dreams and fears, and many groups, people, companies and collaborative attempts that are seeking to work through this for the ultimate benefit of children, which is always, I believe, ultimately for the benefit of the communities within which these children live.
I'll have to ask someone, or many people, what their views are on the seeming demise of what I had thought to be a really nice airline with comfortable and good service and a good attitude to everything that their brand touched.
Is there some element of a cautionary tale to all who have even the slightest tendency to envision how money might roll into town all guns blazing without really having such a firm grasp not only on those 45s of their Western myth-vision but also on the reality of whatever situation they're riding into whether it be a highly complex phenomenon like moving people through the skies or the simple, straightforward, wondrous chaos of transversing spaces of various ways to accept, reject, question, posit, share or shun education?
I spoke to a woman in the airport about children in India. She told me that many children do not get the chance to go to school because parents want them to work in their family businesses and thus see education as a threat. I asked her if that was still largely true, meaning, is it something that is still quite common? Yes, she said, it's quite common still. She seemed well-educated and seemed disheartened by what she was telling me. I wondered if there are activities that are seeking to bridge this mindset towards making these parents aware of alternative possibilities. Could there be some intermediate reality, where a child's introduction to education might actually help the family business? Could there be a dynamic where a guns blazing approach has no direct bearing on the potential for positive outcomes, but where positive outcomes nevertheless emerge and thrive? I'm sure that there are many people asking these same questions, many people and organizations exploring this landscape of so many intertwining hopes and dreams and fears, and many groups, people, companies and collaborative attempts that are seeking to work through this for the ultimate benefit of children, which is always, I believe, ultimately for the benefit of the communities within which these children live.
We face a similar challenge in certain zones of Mexico City where families have small businesses. The businesses are not usually stores as a typical developed world person would think about, but rather they tend to be a mass of makeshift structures set up on sidewalks and urban streets selling plastic bobbles imported from China, food, clothes, and whatever you can imagine. Those businesses are important for the families and a part of the essence of Mexico. Nonetheless, the goal of our project was to have kids in schools learning, not attending customers. We found that many parents (and children) viewed the work as more useful to the children than what they were learning, or not learning, in school. In other words, the value offered at school was insufficient. The only time kids were left at school were times when what it had to offer was superior to whatever else was available. In some cases parents so the school as a sort of babysitting service to be used at their convenience. So, Greg, your intuition about getting the school to somehow be a relevant part of helping the family advance by having school be a place where kids can learn something to strengthen the family business is spot on. In fact, we used that tactic and it did help. It was not a cure all, but it helped. I think that if we are to improve educational opportunities for children, we will have to seek out the ways to do it from within their context, looking at their lives, their needs, their concerns and interests to see how "education" or educational tools can adapt to their environments and become a support for them rather than another burden or a waste of time.
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