Kevin Kudic
Professor Gleason
Adult Learners of Language and Literacy
5/9/2014
Pedagogy of Tahrir Square:
Digital Literacy and Transformative
Learning in the Arab Spring
The symbolic power of Tahrir Square
took form as a manifestation of frustration, anger and indignant treatment of a
people that had had enough. It seemed like the whole world was watching the
beginning of a grand democratic uprising against everything the ancien regime
in Egypt stood for. Decades after the brutal repression by the Mubarak regime,
a community of activists, led primarily by young educated urbanites would come
together demanding that the dictator step down. In Egypt, like many other Arab
nations, the narrative was the systemic repression of a dictatorial regime.
Egypt’s ruthless Hosni Mubarak created an atmosphere of fear during the 29
years of his brutal regime enforced by the secret police, where “torture was systematic,
and often extreme, and corruption was endemic” (Olster). Indeed, the litany of injustices committed
across the Arab world is harrowing and as an article of The Nation aptly
summarizes, includes:
[P]etty and large-scale corruption;
police brutality; abuse of power;
favoritism;
unemployment; poor wages; unequal opportunities; inefficient or nonexistent public
services; lack of freedom of expression and association; state control
of media, culture and education; and many other dimensions of the modern Arab security
state (Khouri).
As a socio-cultural movement, the Arab
Spring required re-tooling and grassroots organization from the bottom-up. This
form of organizing was primarily through the use of ICTs (Information and Communication
Technologies). Socio-cultural movements like the Arab Spring, encompassing many
Arab countries, needed a tool to connect people together to inform and try to
connect people together and ICTS were used to create networks and a robust
discussion among the population that circumvented the repressive ways that
regimes in various Arab regions tried to stifle dissent in their countries.
Viewed
through the perspective of the teachings of Paulo Freire, I will argue that
digital literacy was an important tool in the Arab Spring for creating a transformative
learning environment. I will show that digital literacy can be an effective
tool to link people’s experiences together and create a transformative learning
experience where people are transformed from passive Objects to active Subjects. Transformative learning is not just an
experience relegated to a classroom but a cultural phenomenon that can happen
anywhere and can use expansive public spaces such as the Internet to change the
way we view certain concepts.
Although the Arab Spring movement is
too large to generalize and each country that was affected has its own distinct
history and political development, nevertheless one of the common factors
uniting these countries is the increasing number of users that are occupying
digital spaces and using different forms of social networking sites like
Facebook and Twitter. These activists create networks collectively organized
and sharing a strong sense of solidarity that “challenged dictators, their
online censors, and the offline police. Members of networks created
revolutionary content on their mobiles and digital media, and they distributed
this same content to their friends, families, and members of other networks”
(Allague & Kuebler 1436). A space like this was critical for these users to
help organize and spread information about the protests. New media like
Facebook and Twitter are giving activists and society in general a way to
change or challenge the status quo. Therefore, we can presume that digital
literacy will be an important factor in creating an alternative discourse that
will challenge the status quo and fight censorship and repression. It is
digital literacy that has given the Arab Spring its transformative moment in
history.
Rising Internet usage in the Arab
world has made a connected society that came together during a critical moment
of social rupture. According to the Arab Social Media Report, In Tunisia,
during the first two weeks of January 2011, shortly after the self-immolation
of Mohammed Bouzazi, Facebook usage went up 8 percent, which also signaled a
growing interest in political discussion sparked by Facebook discussion (Fig. 3).
In Egypt, 78.15 percent of Facebook users are between the ages of 15-29 (Fig. 9).
This large base of young urbanites was able to create robust discussion and
activism online.
Indeed, the role of digital literacy
in challenging dominant institutions cannot be underestimated, “overall, the input of the
social media networks was critical in performing two overlapping functions: (a)
organizing the protests and (b) disseminating information about them, including
publicizing protesters’ demands internationally (Facebook reportedly outmatched
Al Jazeera in at least the speed of news dissemination) (Stepanova 2).” The
fact that the Internet could provide a platform, a digital space where ideas
could be expressed is a testament to the power of social media sites to be the
potential for a true democratic space. In this context, digital literacies such
as Facebook and Twitter provided outlets to voice grievances and rally people.
Egyptians used this digital literacy space as a way to educate people about the
injustice that was being done to them. This was followed by extreme government
responses in trying to shut down the amount of activity on ICTs but to no avail.
An article in Wired notes, “the powers-that-be can—and certainly did—persecute
bloggers and infiltrate dissidents’ social networks, hoping to undermine plans
and root out influential rabble-rousers. But compared with the likes of China’s
leaders, the Arab-world governments proved largely inept in their
countermeasures—so much so that in the case of Egypt, authorities resorted to
shutting off Internet and telecom service” (Wolman par 3). Although governments
tried to find a way to break these networks, digital media proved to be a
resilient space for activism.
New Media
allowed activists a safe space that normally isn’t offered in a classroom
setting, or if allowed would be censored due to the repressive natures of many
of these autocratic Arab states. In a sense, the digital space of Facebook and
Twitter were the substitutes for traditional classrooms. Once these spaces are
established, a form of dialogue where people can begin to discuss the things
that make up their reality begins to take place. Freire stresses the
importance of generative themes as important themes to begin dialogue. These generative themes are meant to provoke thought and
discussion. It creates the content of a transformative learning classroom and
“inaugurates the dialogue of education as the practice of freedom” (Pedagogy of
the Oppressed 96).
In Education for Critical
Consciousness, Freire breaks down some of the key components of a basic
literacy course following the transformative learning approach. Instead of
classrooms, there are “culture circles” where there are “coordinators” that
engage in dialogue with the students (42). The students themselves would choose
the content; these generative themes would be the words used to
facilitate the dialogue. The end result of this process was that the students
were not the “recipients” of knowledge but active creators (43). In the case of
the Arab Spring many countries resorted to digital spaces to create keywords
and ideas creating discussion. These weren’t developed in a traditional
classroom setting but took the form of hashtags:
On Twitter, the hashtag “Egypt” had 1.4 million mentions in the three months of the year. Other hashtags – which are essentially search terms – “Jan25” had 1.2m mentions; “Libya” had 990,000; “Bahrain” had 640,000; and “protest” had 620,000. The flurry of tweets spiralled during the turning points of the uprisings (Huang).
On Twitter, the hashtag “Egypt” had 1.4 million mentions in the three months of the year. Other hashtags – which are essentially search terms – “Jan25” had 1.2m mentions; “Libya” had 990,000; “Bahrain” had 640,000; and “protest” had 620,000. The flurry of tweets spiralled during the turning points of the uprisings (Huang).
These hashtags
would provide a kind of generative theme throughout the course of the moments
of the Arab Spring that correlated with the highest degree of social unrest
creating the generative theme that would foster discussion in the collective
populations of the Arab Spring.
In Digital Origins of
Dictatorship and Democracy, Philip Howard analyzes the civil unrest during
the elections in Tehran in June 2009. As the election crisis unfurled, Iranians
took to the streets and violence erupted: “On June 20th, Neda Agha-Soltan
was shot dead at a demonstration…videos of her blood pooling on the street were
uploaded to YouTube” (5). The result of her death led to a flurry of Tweets and
activity on social media sites:
Twitter
user persiankiwi had 24,000 followers by day 6 of the protests… StopAhmadi
kept more than 6,000 followers alert to photos streaming up to Flickr.
The Twitter service itself was registering 30 new posts a minute with the #IranElection identifier…YouTube
became the repository for the digitally captured, lived experiences
of the chaotic streets of Tehran (5).
Although
the events that unfolded in Iran did not automatically topple the regime, it
gave activists the digital tools to sustain a network that provided a
counter-narrative to the events unfolding and how it was depicted in the
official media. It is important to stress that the goal of any transformative
learning experience rooted in political awakening does not lead to a
substitution of one form of government for another. Freire cautions against
reactionary politics that seem to offer quick remedies of a society’s woes and
denounces “rebellious attitudes” that simply mobilize the oppressed masses to
rebellion without cultivating a radical critical spirit (Pedagogy of Freedom
74-75). True transformative learning allows people to be active makers of their
realities, to again use Freire’s term of “reading the world,” it allows people
to give a different interpretation to the events unfolding around them. In the case of the Arab Spring it allowed
people to denounce the systemic violence of regimes and say enough is enough. Traditional forms of media presume that people
are ignorant and therefore prone to propaganda. Noam Chomsky in his assessment
of censorship and state control quotes Walter Lippmann, calling the majority of
the masses of people in society the ‘bewildered herd’ (Chomsky on Miseducation
22). What inevitably ends up happening is that the people begin to fight back
and add tension to the official narrative. They create new infrastructures that
challenge the status quo so that “they support the process of learning new
approaches to political representation, of testing new organizational
strategies, and of cognitively extending the possibilities and prospects for
political transformation from one context to another” (Howard 8). This creates
transformative learning and produces active makers of history. Freire labels
the acceptance of facts without questioning it the banking method of education.
In order to undergo transformative learning, people must not just passively
accept facts, or “communiques” as Freire calls it, but constantly question so
that we create a more democratic world. If not, “[e]ducation thus becomes and
act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher
is the depositor” (Pedagogy Of the Oppressed 72). In using digital literacy, like in the case
of Iran, to post pictures, challenge official narratives and show the world
different perspectives on what is happening, it refutes Lippman’s concept of
the “bewildered herd” and turns Objects into Subjects. The people actively contribute and form their
own narrative.
Paulo Freire’s theory of
transformative learning was rooted in a socio-emancipatory scheme of awakening
the masses to consciousness. His efforts focused on adult basic literacy to try
to give students the tools they needed to reach conscientization. He
would not just give basic literacy lessons, but would fundamentally change the
relationship of teacher-student, the way knowledge is acquired and the action
each student must take in order to impact their community. This form of
literacy was meant to be a means to an end and went beyond just simply
de-coding alpha-numeric systems on a piece of paper. A deeper ramification
would be to consider the relationship of a person with the world around him/her
and how literacy fundamentally changes it.
As Freire puts it, “[i]t is impossible to carry out my literacy work or
to understand literacy…by divorcing the reading of the word from the reading of
the world” (Literacy: Reading the Word and the World 49). It follows that the
“reading of the world” is an important step in the Freirian process of
conscientization. Could we also see the effects of “reading the world” when it
comes to social movements? Perhaps it can be useful to see social movements as
having a pre-requisite moment of uncovering, or stripping away the layers of
society that try to oppress them.
Paulo Freire’s adult literacy aims
were to create a citizenry that would use literacy to change the environment
around them making them active citizens. Inspired by the Cuban mass literacy
campaign, Freire would go to the Brazilian countrysides to initiate a basic
literacy program that would galvanize the peasants who were the most
dispossessed out of all of the people in Brazil. Freire’s ideas take a page
from the Cuban revolution’s ideas and insistence on the importance of educating
adults to create a more democratic and open community. His goal with the
literacy campaign in Brazil was to make the peasants realize that the states of
oppression they experience could be changed through revolutionary
consciousness. Specifically, it gave peasants the attitude and frame of mind to
confront existing oppression and demand the dignity of equal pay as rural
workers. It allows rural workers to organize and demand justice. Freire’s
implementation of transformative education through basic literacy had a direct
way of communicating to the people that challenged the traditional classroom
milieu. This approach is anathema to how traditional literacy courses are
normally taught where the content is so removed from the lives of the students
that it ends up shutting down the interest and therefore the intellectual and
emotional attachment a student should have towards the learning material. As
Freire notes,
We wanted a literacy program which would be an introduction to the democratization of culture, a program with men as its Subjects rather than as patient recipients, a program which itself would be an act of creation, capable of releasing other creative acts, one in which students would develop the impatience and vivacity which characterize search and invention (43).
We wanted a literacy program which would be an introduction to the democratization of culture, a program with men as its Subjects rather than as patient recipients, a program which itself would be an act of creation, capable of releasing other creative acts, one in which students would develop the impatience and vivacity which characterize search and invention (43).
In
the case of the Arab Spring, there were no culture circles, or coordinators per
se but there were active Subjects coming together tired of the routine
oppression that they were facing in their country and throughout the region in
Tunisia, Bahrain and Egypt but in order
for transformative learning to occur a fundamental shift in how we make meaning
has to occur. In the case of the Arab Spring this meaning perspective was
challenged and new methods of inclusion supported by digital spaces and
collective activism helped give rise to a new form of critical consciousness
that was conducive for a transformative learning experience. Freire summarizes
this revolutionary consciousness and how it liberates:
To surmount the situation of oppression, people must first critically recognize its causes, so that through transforming action they can create a new situation, one which makes possible the pursuit of a fuller humanity. But the struggle to be more fully human has already begun in the authentic struggle to transform the situation. Although the situation of oppression is a dehumanized and dehumanizing totality affecting both the oppressors and those whom they oppress, it is the latter who must, from their stifled humanity, wage for both the struggle for a fuller humanity… (47).
--> --> This shift is integral to the overall holistic education program, which focuses not only on achieving literacy but connecting this to a deep change in consciousness. Conscientization, requires an overhaul in the way we relate to society moving from a passive state of dependency (Objects) to an active consciousness- raising state of independence (Subjects). This transformation seeks to empower individuals that suffer from the yoke of oppression. This oppression is not an imaginary force, but rather a real force employed and sustained by systemic inequalities that are embedded and taken for granted in the society
Here it is useful to use Mezirow’s analysis of critical reflection in “How Critical Reflection Triggers Transformative Learning.” In any state where transformative learning occurs a “meaning perspective” has been fundamentally altered. Mezirow makes the distinction between two different types of meaning schemes: perspectives and schemes. “Meaning perspectives are made up of higher-order schemata, theories, propositions, beliefs, prototypes, goal orientations, and evaluations, and what linguists call ‘networks of arguments.’” (2).
These perspectives are habits that
we take for granted, and the more we passively receive these constructs without
critically analyzing them, the more it reinforces our “habits of expectation” (3-4).
The Arab Spring then was a moment of awakening that drew people to challenge
the status quo and change their world. This awakening coincides with Freire’s
concept of conscientization. Analyzing the situation in a Freirian
paradigm views a world in which the transformation of Object to Subject hinges
on the confrontation of the world. In Education for Critical Consciousness,
an Object is somebody that tacitly observes history and does nothing to change
it, but an active Subject questions the existing reality and tries to change it
(100-101). The Arab Spring created Subjects that were intent on not being mere passive
recipients of Knowledge but active citizenry. These Subjects, the dissidents,
believed that they were no longer beholden to the whims of an autocratic state
but that they had essential rights and actively asserted their dignity as human
beings. Therefore, transformative learning can be seen as happening
within a cultural phenomenon that can happen anywhere people decide to awaken
to conscientization. This widespread dissatisfaction spread
and made people critically reflect on their status as an oppressed people. These
constructs orient ourselves to society and establishes patterns of meaning that
we carry with us everyday, so that the basic assumptions that we have about society,
government, economy, politics, religion, and family are all internalized in our
minds to create a form of ideology that Mezirow defines as
…[A] form of
prereflective consciousness, which does not question the validity of existing social norms and
resists critique of presuppositions. Such social amnesia is manifested
in every facet of our lives— in the economic, political, social, health, religious, educational, occupational, and
familial. Television has become a major
force in perpetuating and extending the hegemony of mainstream ideology (16).
This oppressive ideology
works in conjunction with forces that seek to take away spaces from the people
to critically express their views. The antidote to this annexation of space is
for young activists to create their own spaces so that critical consciousness
can be reached. If this isn’t done then ideology as a force that supports
status quo and stifles dissent takes over public spaces so that people are left
without a voice to speak out. If public
spaces are slowly being taken over by oppressive forces, then what is the other
form of space where people can safely protest and voice their dissension? The
Arab Spring shows that digital literacy and the ability to use the network as a
means to an end in helping spread information during the peak moments of the
Arab Spring, gives hope to a future increasingly becoming more and more
controlling in terms of the restriction of Internet freedom. Digital literacies
will be important tools for transformative learning and “writing the world.”
Works
Cited
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“The Arab Spring and the Role of ICTs Editorial Introduction.” International
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Freire, Paulo. Education for
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Freire, Paulo and Donaldo Macedo. Literacy:
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