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Presentation |
I believe a
prevailing sense that development is “in a funk,” or has
failed to demonstrate its value and should be abandoned, is
shortsighted. I contend that its core-mission is to
facilitate the activation of unrealized potential in its
human subjects, and I assert that its trajectory suggests
this core-mission has simply never been fully engaged
One can argue that six decades of modern development have
not significantly elevated the human journey. But that can
be taken as an indictment of the development industry and
its influence, rather than development itself. These often
seem to work at cross-purposes to development’s
core-mission, denying its trajectory; history is the key.
Post-WW II reconstruction and democratization formed into
basic structural development. The emergent development
industry then took hold within a frame of Western capitalist
economic and political theory; consolidating and wielding
the power of its dominant culture influence in politics,
corporate society and academia. Its rhetoric and
infrastructure overwhelmed competing perspectives,
restricting their influence and access to power. The
development industry eventually began responding to the
obvious fact of its self-compromised intentions by
introducing new forms of intervention: basic needs and
participatory development, and through an emphasis on
empowering the local.
In the development industry, political currency, lucrative
contracts, and career paths for academics ensure a
counterproductive emphasis on reproducing rather than
recreating the world. Visionaries like Paulo Freire, Maxine
Greene and Ramona Fernandez, and the Discipline of Black
Studies, have shown that through literacy defined by
mono-cultural dominance in multi-cultural societies, public
education systems by design support the status-quo. While
reorienting education seems to offer the best long-term
solution for redressing this shortcoming, innovative
development strategies rooted in liberation pedagogy may
offer a more immediate likely-to-take-hold alternative.
Through grassroots social programs in Brazil I came to
realize the value of placing greater emphasis on forming the
citizens of excluded constituencies, especially youth,
through a process of emotionally as well as intellectually
resonant collaborative reconstructions of reality – based on
the pursuit of social justice. Emotional resonance is rooted
in understanding that in addition to making sense, an
approach must be credible. Programs I’ve studied in Brazil
demonstrate that such a process can liberate its
beneficiaries to participate in further developing
themselves and motivate them to participate in the broader
development of their communities, as well as facilitating
their more general contributions to society as productive
citizens.
Structural, basic needs, participatory and empowering
development approaches should not be abandoned. But they
should be invoked more thoughtfully, with an understanding
that their value adheres to their role as tactical tools
employed to address issues or circumstances impacting the
human journey, but which do not directly or sufficiently
facilitate the personal self-realization of our individual
human potentials.
The historic trajectory and ultimate purpose of development
must be honored. Education and political economy must
abandon their service to privileged-class dominant culture
definitions of literacy. And they must abandon their
emphasis on producing citizens who specifically serve the
interests of those definitions. Note my departure from more
militant strategies. Revolutionary rhetoric is inherently
problematical and, with all due respect to Marx and Freire
the privileged classes will not commit “class suicide.” But
it is not unrealistic to believe in the value of principled
rhetoric supported by personal credibility, or in the idea
that privileged-class dominance can be lessened over time.
While authoring articles as a freelance journalist, I
discovered that Brazilian grassroots social programs,
particularly in Salvador, Bahia, employ a fundamentally
common strategy to stabilize their communities. The first of
these organizations, Blocos-Afros, evolved from Carnival
performance Grupos (music groups) which, through their
performance, expressed resistance to the Brazilian military
dictatorship. Performance became a lure for troubled youth,
and it was through discovering how their participation
transformed communities that the Grupos evolved into Blocos-Afros.
Within the Blocos and subsequent other programs favela youth
adopt more-constructive behaviors.
Many current programs have formed around specific principles
articulated in pedagogy developed by a program which is not
descended from the Blocos. Projeto Axé arrived later, under
the banner of common cause in response to an awakening
perception of a “crisis of children in the street.” That
perception emerged in the late 1980s as Brazil consolidated
its transition back to civilian rule.
In 1985 Italian born educator Cesare di La Rocca was already
the long-time UNESCO representative to Brazilia. He was
taken with Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and admired
the constructivist childhood development theory of Jean
Piaget. His interest in the plight of street children was
reinforced by robust populist sentiment towards
re-democratization. A new constitution, in 1988, encouraged
municipalities to engage and support local initiatives such
as Axé would become. When a 1990 Statute of the Child and
Adolescent granted Brazilian children and youth special
status as ‘citizens under development,’ La Rocca left UNESCO
and founded Axé.
The significance of Axé rests on its revolutionary Pedagogy
of Desire, designed specifically for working with street
children. Although discarding the revolutionary rhetoric of
Freire, it is solidly grounded in Freiran principles and
Freire worked directly with the program’s staff through
Axé’s first six years of existence. The Axé pedagogy is also
notably informed by Piaget, Argentine educator Emilia
Fereiro and French Freudian theorist Jacques Lacan.
Demonstrating success makes Axé noteworthy, but not
extraordinarily noteworthy. It is only in combination with
its ever expanding influence that Axé’s success becomes
truly significant. Axé initiated a non-traditional form of
development which has proven to be effective, more-or-less
self-sustainable and self-propagating. It inspires the
constructive emergence of other programs, like Circo
Picolino, which was founded concurrent with Brazil’s
transition back to civilian rule in 1985. Salvador’s largely
impoverished two and a quarter million inhabitants are 87%
Afro-Brazilian, but co-founders Anselmo Serrat and Veronica
Tamaoki were struggling to survive and could only enlist
students from the nearly all-white middle-class. So Picolino
was strictly a business enterprise until 1990, when it
encountered Axé.
Shortly after forming Axé, La Rocca set out to find
opportunities around the city for the youth in his program
to participate in various activities. A key factor was that
the children themselves would express a desire to
participate in a particular kind of activity, and some
wanted to attend circus school. Serrat welcomed Axé’s black
favela children at Picolino, but their arrival precipitated
an exodus of the financially more lucrative middle class
students. This was not triggered by the students themselves,
but by their parents.
Picolino could have abandoned its new commitment and
reverted back to serving only the white middle-class. It was
forced to make a decision, but not forced to make the
decision that it did. Picolino opted to stand with the
excluded youth of Salvador’s favelas, but had no experience
working with children like these. Axé thus influenced
Picolino’s subsequent reorientation.
Axé provides its educators with special training for working
with street children. Its pedagogy has nothing to do with
‘reading, writing and arithmetic,’ rather it facilitates the
reconstruction of each child’s reality (perspectives)
consistent with surfacing their own desires for a better
future. Children are not recruited into Axé, street
educators initiate a three phase strategy which brings them
into the program of their own accord.
Flirt pedagogy takes place on the street child’s turf and
terms. It recognizes that the lives of these children have
been marked by abusive experiences which leave them
suspicious toward outsiders and unreceptive to overtures. It
also accounts for their developmental capabilities,
consistent with the work of Piaget. Street educators
initially feign disinterest, allowing the children to see
for themselves over-time that they pose no threat, and
beyond that may offer a portal through which the children
might pass into a better future. Here again we see a
correlation between experience-based emotional understanding
and credibility.
The second phase, courtship pedagogy, is initiated when the
curiosity of a child is piqued to the point where he or she
initiates a street dialogue. This dialogue is first
characterized by verbal ‘pricking,’ a kind of making fun at
one another. Over time it becomes more serious,
progressively opening a window on the specific life, fears
and wishes of the child. Almost always it culminates at a
point where the child expresses, of his or her own volition,
a desire to leave the streets. At this point the street
educator will issue an invitation for the child to enter the
Axé program.
Phase-three, or comfortable pedagogy, is constituted by
citizenship training which largely takes place in an
activity venue of the child’s own choosing. Thus the child
begins to realize and develop a sense of having control over
his or her own destiny. Typically, as is true with Picolino,
the activity venues are associated with the performing arts.
While conducting research partially funded by a 2005 Indiana
University Project on African Expressive Traditions grant, I
was invited to visit Projeto Cultural Arte Consciente. Arte
Consciente was founded in the Salvador Afro-Brazilian favela
of Saramandaia in 2003, by five Axé alumni, two of whom are
also Picolino alumni. The 32,000 residents of Saramandaia
suffer from chronic 60% unemployment, and by 2003 the
community had become very violent. Most disturbing was the
fact that both the perpetrators and the victims of the
violence were typically so young … 10, 11, and 12 years old.
Arte Consciente was founded in response to that violence,
and by the time I encountered the program two and a half
years later the violence had abated.
My encounter with Arte Consciente prompted me to more
aggressively look for other indications of Axé’s impact on
society. Another program, Agua Dourada in the Salvador
community of Pituaçu, was also founded by Axé alumni. A
couple of the founders of Arte Consciente had reached out to
activists in other struggling communities.
In 1995 Fernanda Almeida, and Inaiá Carvalho reported that
Axé was consulting, and helping to train street educators
around Brazil, and even in other countries. The then recent
establishment of Projeto Travessía in São Paulo they said,
which eleven years later still attends to thousands of
street children in the world’s third largest city, was
“inspired by the experience of Axé.”
Almeida and Carvalho noted that in Salvador itself at that
time, at least some of “the proposals of Axé came to be
subsidized, technically, by a program developed by the
Municipal Government, known as Cidade Mãe, which” was then
serving “700 youth in educative workshops in two popular
neighborhoods of the city.” Like Projeto Travessía, Cidade
Mãe still serves at-risk children and youth in Brazil.
I believe that within the frame of development’s culminating
progression, consistent with its ultimate mission, Axé,
Picolino and Arte Consciente should become the focus of
intense scrutiny to produce a more complete and better
understanding of their work, and of more critical reflection
and debate to better assess their impact on society.
Challenging Mono-cultural Dominance in a Multi-cultural
Society through Non-traditional Development.
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