Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we’ve recently added to our collection.
Schooling the World (DVD 10940) questions whether Western-style educational systems are appropriate for the rest of the world. For all the philanthropic efforts to increase the quality of education in impoverished countries, our idea of a good education may not fit with the rest of the world’s needs. This controversial film uses the microcosm of a Buddhist society to examine how modernized education interacts with local cultures.
Official description from the film container:
If you wanted to change an ancient culture in a generation, how would you do it? You would change the way it educates its children. The U.S. Government knew this in the 19th century when it forced Native American children into government boarding schools. Today, volunteers build schools in traditional societies around the world, convinced that school is the only way to a ‘better’ life for indigenous children. But is this true? What really happens when we replace a traditional culture’s way of learning and understanding the world with our own? Beautifully shot on location in the Buddhist culture of Ladakh in the northern Indian Himalayas, Schooling the World takes a challenging, sometimes funny, ultimately deeply disturbing look at the effects of modern education on the world’s last sustainable indigenous cultures.