I just read an interesting article about poverty in america. One of the things that comes up in the article is people being stuck in the social class they are born into. People from lower social classes have less access to opportunitites.

So, that takes me to open content, open courseware. Part of the mission of the COSL is:

“We believe that all human beings are endowed with a capacity to learn, improve, and progress. Educational opportunity is the mechanism by which we fulfill that capacity. Therefor free and open access to educational opportunity is a basic human right. When educational materials can be electronically copied and transferred around the world at almost no cost, we have a greater ethical obligation than ever before to increase the reach of opportunity.”

So, then the question I think I’ve asked here comes up again — how do we do this? I’m still not sure. And, I don’t think that the content we currently have up will help to create that access. I think I’ve said this before as well. I don’t think that we can simply expect low SES folks to all of a sudden decide – HEY! I’m gonna go get a college education. If folks are struggling just to make ends meet, then don’t we have to provide stepping stones to get to where OCW is right now? Sorry, but I think I’m repeating myself again.

So, what are the stepping stones? What are the stepping stones in OCW from barely making ends meet and having values of survival to having time to think abstractly and not worry about if there is going be food on the table at the end of the month? What is that content? Is it parenting content, life skills content? Or? What is it? Is it educational content.

I actually do believe firmly in COSL’s mission. I do believe that giving people access to free, quality, education will make a difference in people’s lives. Its just a question, for me, of how to get there. What to offer, how to offer it? What changes in current content do we need to make for it to be accessible? How do we learn what we need to do? How do we fully understand what it takes to properly localize?

well..

How do we localize? I’m not sure exactly what the full answer, but one answer that has been hit home in 2 sessions of a cultural diversity class I’m taking is knowing that we’ve got to become culturally competent. We’ve got to learn as much as possible about the culture we are going to, we’ve got to take the time to be able to fully understand where we have gone from to where we are going to. And, we’ve also got to view those that we are working with as equals. (Yes, yes, I’m not the only person saying this, I know that)

I’ll take this from LEAD, a teen leadership program in Eugene, Oregon:

LEAD believes that when an organization is working with an oppressed group, like young people, that there must be people from the targeted group in leadership in that organization. To understand and eliminate the difficulties of oppression must include the thinking and perspectives of the people who are experiencing it.

What does oppression have to do with content? Simple – when we are taking content from one group to another, whether that be going from a dominant group to an oppressed group or the opposite way, we have got to take leadership from that group. We have got to sit down with members of that group that is learning the content and understand what it is that they need. We’ve got to include them on our decision making. If that is possible. Sometimes it is not always possible, but we have to make an effort. If we are not able to bring members of the group in, we should learn about the group in other ways. We will be rotten localizers if we don’t know about the group we are localizing for.