The theme of ‘regaining control of the self’ is identified within the narrative related to the Shikshantar, Indian community and is a theme that links to my community partner, MCCS.
Through the reflection narrative style, which is meant to stimulate your own personal reflections, we can examine this theme and how it links to my community partner by taking time to explore the aims of MCCS and how these aims correlate with the philosophical foundations of the Shikshantar community.
Just like any educational system, the overall goal is to empower the students and prepare them with the educational background in order to fulfill their potential. The special thing about the County Community School system is that there is even more of an effort to employ a curriculum that can support these students to get back on track with their academic pathways, but it also goes beyond that.
We saw that in Shikshantar, Gandhi’s concept of “swaraj” is the main ingredient to the wealth of philosophy that flows from this place, and is an ideal that involves “a genuine attempt to regain control of the ‘self’...It is swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves” (WOWO 132). To me, this concept deals with the fact that we as humans are searching for ourselves, and participate in our life journey to find ourselves and gain empowerment through our experiences. I believe that in doing this we restore individual power to ourselves and this is something that I see illustrated at MCCS. The idea that this schooling system is set up not only to improve the academic standings of the students, but even more so this program attempts to empower students to regain “self-respect, self-responsibility, and capacities of self-realization” (WOWO 133). This leaves the question, how can you also contribute to the on-tracking of these students? They need just as much support, if not more, in order to gain the true sense of themselves, and be given the chance to do that through empowering education and positive social interaction.
Another theme that I identified in the Columbus, Ohio narrative was the theme of ‘new direction.’ In the sense that, as revealed in the narrative, “the Earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it in a few decades” (WOWO 188). My take from this is that the scarcity of many human resources is becoming more and more apparent, everything from our past has more than well caught up to us and as a result we need to employ new operating systems in order to save our planet. It isn’t impossible.
Using the observation narrative style we will take the time to explore this theme and how it is illustrated in the interview that I conducted with Omar Carrera from Canal Alliance. The theme of new direction calls for “leaders in some of America’s largest institutions - health care, academe, government - are changing how they lead” (WOWO 189). This same concept of new leadership and new direction can also be seen in the interview, as Omar reveals “we are really changing internally here, returning power to the people from the community and helping them get the skills that they need to be the voices of the community and direct policy makers, and we have the role of just facilitating it.” He shares that Canal Alliance is taking these new measures to change its current operating systems in order to best provide to the community. This is because in the past, programs have been created as a result of what Canal Alliance leaders think that the community members need. By employing this new direction, Canal Alliance will create problems based on the needs of the community and these needs will be expresses from community members themselves. This new operating system of Canal Alliance is an attempt to ultimately restore power to the people of the Canal, as is the operating system that the U.S is undertaking in order to empower people to take charge and make changes for the better of this world.
-- Taki Te Koi
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