The Saint
Time to burst the bubble
Patrick OHare suggests we do it the Uruguayan way
Tomorrows university will be without doors, without walls, open, like space: great
(Student Manifesto, La Plata, 1920)
The doors of this congress will always be open: no future Ibero-American extensión congress can do without the active participation of social organizations
(Pro-Rector Extensión Humberto Tommasino, Montevideo 2009)
For years, Latin American universities have placed extensión, (a rich concept which loses much power when translated into the english community engagement) alongside teaching and research, in a system based on co-government (between students, staff and graduates), autonomy and free education.
In Uruguay, extensión, which was sidelined during its dictatorship and the neo-liberal nineties, has been making a dramatic comeback.
With a philosophy based on the ideas of horizontality, dialogue and holistic education, (and drawing on the work of Freire and the Uruguayan Rebelato), over 10,000 Uruguayan students and 800 teaching staff have been going out into communities, schools and workplaces with two things in mind: generating new forms of knowledge and the small matter of transforming society.
In reality, this translates into a range of projects with different actors, including recuperated factories turned co-operatives, small farmers, community orchards, local health clinics, human rights groups and many more.
There is the case of Carlos Santos, an anthropologist who formed part of a group which worked for six years with small dairy farmers, aiming to improve the quality of life of the participants. Or of Martina Felisberti who started working with the huerta (orchard) project, which grew out of a community response to hunger in the wake of the economic crisis of 2002 and has since worked with a community radio in a mental hospital. Or my own case, where we have set up a recycling circuit in Humanities, which is collected by a co-operative formed by a group who used to live scavenging on the municipal dump.
According to Santos, there can be no excuse for false neutrality, instead the university must take a position on the transformation of society. For Felisberti, the university has a responsibility towards the society which supports it and that if the university is to create rounded individuals and professionals who will tend to the needs of society, then students must be aware of the reality which surrounds them.
Compare this to the situation in St Andrews, where many students have only seen the rest of Fife through the window of a bus or, more probably, their parents car or taxi.
When I started to work with ex-miners in Oakley and Kinglassie, highflyers in the social depravation and unemployment charts, I had little idea of their harsh reality and the inspiring community responses (a miners museum and community radio for example), which draw on a centuries-old history of collective struggle doon the pit. There are of course other examples of university involvement with communities, such as the medics who go out to places like Buckhaven and certain volunteer activities. SD is an exciting hub, both in terms of multidisciplinarity and community initiatives, such as the recent Engage project, where St Andrews has been taking a lead in an initiative aimed at reducing local carbon emissions.
Much more could be done however. How much of students rich cultural talent reaches out beyond the universitys historic walls? How often is its academic excellence truly put at the service of the local community? How often is the other knowledge which exists for example in fishing or farming communities given court in a university setting and treated as an equal?
Past exchange students in Uruguay have complained about the large class sizes here: I, for one, am happy that the doors are open to all and that the classroom is being extended to society as a whole
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