"Schooling the World" - Global Education Movie Screening at Morgan Park Academy

What really happens when we replace a traditional culture’s way of learning and understanding the world with our own?

Morgan Park Academy will host a special community screening of Schooling the World: The White Man’s Last Burden, an exciting documentary that explores this important question, examining the effects of modern education on the world’s last sustainable indigenous cultures.

All are welcome to join us Thursday, April 2, at 7:00 p.m. in the Baer Theater in the MPArts Center (2153 W. 111th Street). The event is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a discussion with the film’s director, Carol Black.

The film:

• looks deeply at how the U.S. government did this in the 19th century when it forced Native American children into government boarding schools. This extends to present day, where volunteers build schools in traditional societies around the world, convinced that school is the only way to a “better” life for indigenous children and the effects this has on their society. But is it?
• investigates what really happens when we replace a traditional culture’s way of learning and understanding the world with our own.
• examines the hidden assumption of cultural superiority behind education aid projects, which overtly aim to help children “escape” to a “better life” -- despite mounting evidence of the environmental, social, and mental health costs of our own modern consumer lifestyles, from epidemic rates of childhood depression and substance abuse to pollution and climate change.
• looks at the failure of institutional education to deliver on its promise of a way out of poverty, both here in the United States and in the so-called “developing” world.

Finally, Schooling the World calls for a deeper dialogue between cultures, suggesting that we have at least as much to learn as we have to teach, and that these ancient sustainable societies may harbor knowledge vital for our own survival in the coming millennia.

RESERVE YOUR SEAT(S) FOR SCHOOLING THE WORLD

Watch the Trailer

Questions about this event? Please contact Colleen Amberg (email), the director of Morgan Park Academy’s Global Learners program.

More information about the film is available here.

Schooling the World
Thursday, April 2
7:00 p.m.
Tickets: Free
Baer Theater, MPA Arts Center (2153 W. 111th Street)