What is Nonformal Education?

Rationale

This first session introduces participants to each other and to NFE through a series of NFE activities. Participants' experience is drawn upon at every opportunity and participants are encouraged to express their own opinions and make their own interpretations of how NFE is practiced. At the same time, however, they are encouraged to form a supportive group - to refrain from evaluating each other, to create group norms for working together and to make some group recommendations. The local cultural context may be emphasized through the use of local proverbs and through the active participation of host country nationals and Volunteers with experience working in the culture.

Objectives of Session

To form a supportive group through NFE activities.
To share personal experience and knowledge.
To explore several ways that NFE can be carried out in Peace Corps assignments.

Peace Corps NFE Manual Reference
Chapter 1- What is Nonformal Education?
Chapter 2 - NFE in Action

Materials Needed

Flip chart paper
Makcers
Masking tape
Flip charts:

Goals of NFE Workshop
Definition of NFE

Handouts:

Whar is NFE - One per participant
Interests/Skills Inventory - One per participant
NFE in the Developing World - One set per participant

For PST/IST:

Proverbs on large strips of paper

For IST:

Map of country
String cut into 1/2 meter lengths
Name tags for participants
Thumbtacks or push pins

Trainer Preparation

1. Read Peace Corps NFE Manual, Chapters 1 and 2.
2. Read through the session with your co-trainers and decide together on the options you want to use.

3. Assemble materials.
4. PST (or IST) - Write halves of proverbs on large strips of flip chart paper. (Cut 5" x 28" strips and write in large letters with markers). Write half as many complete proverbs as there are participants, i.e., each participant will get one half of a proverb. If there are an odd number of participants, you can participate yourself.

OPTION

Have HCNs help you find appropriate local proverbs and prepare as above.

FOR IST: Post map of host country in training room. If none is available, draw an outline of the country on a sheet of flip chart paper. Add major cities and towns and all villages where participants are stationed.

5. Prepare flip chart of Goals of NFE Workshop. (See Activity 3)

GOALS OF NFE WORKSHOP

To gain an understanding of NFE and its application to all areas of development.
To develop skills in and knowledge of NFE methods and techniques.
To adapt these techniques to your own work in the host country context.

6. Prepare flip chart of Definition of NFE

DEFINITION OF NFE

Nonformal Education NFE is out-of school learning that is planned and agreed upon by both facilitator and participants.

· Participants are active; they solve problems, work with their hands, think creatively.
· The learning is practical, flexible and based on the real needs of the participants.
· The purpose of NFE is to improve the life of the individual or community, rather than to teach isolated skills or knowledge.
· NFE emphisizes trust and respect while encouraging questioning and reflection

In addition, NFE is different in emphasis from both FORMAL education and traditional learning systems in several ways:

NFE helps people generate creative, new solutions to real life problems.
NFE is carried out in an atmosphere of mutual respect and equality between teacher and learner.
NPE comes from the people, rather than being taken to them.

7. Redesign Interests/Skills Inventory, if desired. Type and photocopy one for each participant.
8. Photocopy handouts.
9. If possible, have participants read Chapters 1 and 2 of the Peace Corps NFE Manual before the workshop begins.

Activity 1: Introductions, Welcome

Activity Time 10 minutes

Purpose To welcome participants to the workshop.

Step-by-step

1. Introduce yourself and say a few words about your background. For example, you might mention your experience as a trainer, your work in NFE, or your knowledge of the local context as a member of the host culture or as a Volunteer.

2. Say a few words of welcome to participants. If counterparts or other HCNs are present, make special mention of how their experience and active participation will be valuable to Volunteers. Mention something about your training style and your expectations for the workshop.

For example: You might say that you encourage questions and discussion; that NFE is an evolving field, so some disagreement about what it is and how to do it is expected; that you will try to be flexible and accommodate participants' needs by doing daily evaluations and incorporating the results into the sessions that follow.

Activity 2: Participants' Introductory Activity

Activity Time About 30 minutes, depending on the size of the group

Purpose To have participants get to know each other through an NFE activity.

Proverbs - FOR PST/IST (30 minutes)

Step - by - Step

1. Let the group know that you have written some proverbs from various parts of the world (or local proverbs) on pieces of paper and cut them in half so that the first part of the proverb is on one strip and the second is on another strip.

2. Explain that you will give everyone a strip and that they can move around the room until they find the person with the other half of their proverb. When they think they have found their partner they can introduce themselves (if they don't know each other already) and talk for a few minutes about what the proverb means and how it applies to the workshop. You might say:

You will be working together intensively for the next week or so exploring NFE ideas and methods. See if you can decide together what your proverb has to say that might apply to this situation

OPTION

Instead of asking participants to discuss how the proverbs relate to the workshop they might discuss instead one of the following:

· How the proverb applies to nonformal education
· How it applies to their Peace Corps service
· How it applies to community development

3. Ask if there are any questions about the activity.
4. Give each participant half of a proverb written on a large strip of flip chart paper.
5. Ask participants to begin the activity.
6. Keep time (about 15 minutes).
7. After the time is up, ask everyone to sit next to their partner.
8. Ask each pair to one by one get up, post their proverb on the wall somewhere in the training room, and to tell the group what they have decided their proverb means and how it might apply to the workshop. Each pair has about two minutes to present their proverb.

FOB IST- Map Exercise (About 30 minutes depending on the size of the group.)

NOTE: This activity is useful if IST participants do not know each other and are unfamiliar with the activities that the others are working on in their Peace Corps assignments. If IST participants all know each other and are familiar with each other's activities you might want to do the Proverbs activity instead of this exercise.

Step - by - Step for IST

1. Mention to the group that the purpose of this activity is to get to know each other and to begin to learn about the activities everyone is involved in. Let them know that sharing of experience is very important in this workshop and that most activities that they do will be tied directly to the assignments of some or all of the group member and their knowledge of the local culture.

2. Pass out a blank name tag, two thumbtacks and a piece of string to each participant. Have markers available.

3. Say that in this activity everyone will attach their name tag to the map, putting the thumbtack in the town or village where they are stationed and connecting it with the string to their name tag which they will pin to the wall at the border of the map. While doing this they can introduce themselves to the group and briefly describe the work they are doing (if possible, with an emphasis on NFE activities). Each participant has about 2 minutes to speak about their work.

4. Keep time (30 minutes).

NOTE: If your group has more than 12-15 participants, you'll need to plan more time for this activity.

5. At the end, thank the participants and tell them that as the workshop continues they will have further chance to share both insights and difficulties they may be having in their work with others and to discover how NFE might be useful in the particular activities they are involved in.

Activity 3: Workshop Goals

Activity Time 10 minutes

Purpose To understand the goals of the workshop.

Step - by - Step

1. Post the flip chart with goals of the workshop.

2. Introduce the goals, emphasizing the practical nature of the workshop, and that the skills and knowledge participants gain should be directly applicable to their work.

3. Inform participants that the overview of the workshop sessions will be postponed to Session 3 in order to incorporate the results of a questionnaire you will give them later in this session. Let them know that the results of this Interests/Skills Inventory will help you tailor the workshop to their particular needs and interests, and will give them the opportunity to share the NFE skills they may already have with others.

BREAK 15 minutes

Activity 4: What Is NFE?

Activity Time 60 minutes

Purpose To understand the definition of NFE and see how it applies to an example of a successfull Peace Corps assignment.

Julie's Assignment - FOR PST

Step - by - Step

1. Explain the purpose of the activity to the group (see above).
2. Post the definition of NFE that you have written on flip chart paper. Take a few minutes to read and discuss it with participants.

At this point you might also want to take about 10 minutes to mention some of the complexities of NFE:

NFE is defined differently by different practitioners - some say that NFE is any out of school learning, others stress that participants need to design their own learning activities, and still others emphasize its political nature.

NFE is not absolutely distinct from formal education in its methods; participants exercise varying degrees of control over the process, from designing all of their own learning and using the facilitator as a resource person to attending a workshop like this one where the content is mostly planned in advance.

Some say that we could see NFE not as an method of education that has well-defined characteristics, but as a continuum-from low to high facilitator control-and that how it is practiced depends on local conditions.

Let the group know that Peace Corps stresses the definition given in this activity, but that participants are encouraged to read the materials on the resource table and to reflect on these and on their own experience to modify this definition for themselves as time goes on.

Mention that you will also provide handouts at the end of the session that they can read on their own time, which attempt to summarize how NFE is practiced differently in the developing world by three major practitioners: Paulo Freire of Brazil, Lyra Srinivasan of India and W.P. Napitupulu of Indonesia.

3. Now introduce a short case study of a Volunteer who felt at the end of her service that she had used NFE successfully in her work. Ask participants to form small groups of four or five and take 20 minutes to discuss in what ways the Volunteer's activities fit the Peace Corps definition of NFE. Ask each group to appoint someone to write down their observations to share later with the large group.
4. Have participants count off or suggest another way of dividing into groups.
5. Pass out What is NFE? handouts.
6. Direct groups to corners of the training room. (Separate rooms are not recommended for brief discussions because of the time it takes to get settled).
7. Keep time (20 minutes).
8. When time is up, call participants back together in a large group.
9. Take about 15 minutes to have groups volunteer ways that Julie's service fit the definition of NFE. Be sure they give concrete examples of what Julie or the group did or did not do to illustrate their points.

For example Julie's group helped solve each other's problems in small business by sharing their knowledge of advertising and reduction of costs of production rather than relying on outside "expert" advice.

10. To sum up, ask the group what about Julie's service strikes them as particularly interesting or different from (or similar to) the kind of group work or education they are used to. Encourage them to draw on their previous experience to suggest similarities or differences.

OPTION

Instead of (or in addition to) using Julie's case, you might invite a Volunteer or HCN in the area to talk to the group about what she/he is doing in NFE. After the presentation participants should work first in small groups and then as a large group to discuss in what ways the project fits the definition as above. See first NOTE below to avoid nitpicking and hurt feelings.

FLOR IST- Participants' Experience (45-60 minutes)

Step - by - Step for IST

1. Follow steps 1 and 2 as for PST.
2. After the definition of NFE is posted and discussed, let participants know that they now will have the opportunity to share in more detail what they are doing in their assignments by mentioning how some of their activities fit the posted definition.

You might approach this by having several Volunteers talk about their activities in detail and how they fit or do not fit the definition. Alternatively, you might read each point in the definition and ask for examples from the experience of the participants. You might also ask participants to say "My job (or activity) might be closer to NFE if.

NOTE: Take care not to let the group make evaluative comments about participants' projects I "That doesn't really ft the definition because." If you sense that an example does not fit the definition, you might ask the person who gave the example (not others) to say how it might fit the definition better if., or to explain in more detail how they feel it illustrates the points in the definition.

Activity 5: Interests/Skills Inventory

Activity Time 30 minutes

Purpose

To determine participants' needs and interests in the sessions, options and activities presented in this module and to discover the NFE - related skills that they may already have to share with the group.

Step - by - Step

1. Explain the purpose of the activity. Remind the group that you will use the results of this activity to tailor the rest of the sessions a little more carefully to their needs, and that you will present the results and discuss them with the group in Session 3.

NOTE: Presenting the results in Session 2 would give the facilitator too little time to process the Interests/Skills Inventories if you are doing your sessions back-to-back.

2. Pass out an Interests/Skills Inventory to each participant. Ask them to take about 10 minutes to fill them out individually.

3. After participants have finished but before you collect the inventories, ask them to form small groups of 4 or 5 participants to share their needs and interests with each other as well as talking about the skills they may already have and how they used them in the past. (For example, someone may have had experience doing group-building activities in a college dorm, or planning and organizational skills from running a small business.)

Suggest that someone from each group write down their group's special talents. They can take about 15 minutes for this.

4. For the last 5 minutes have each group report on its skills to the large group.
5. Collect Interests/Skilla Inventories.

Activity 6: Norm-Setting

Activity Time 10 minutes

Purpose

To have participants agree on expectations for their own behavior as a group.

Step - by - Step

1. Suggest to the group that since they have had a chance to work together for a few hours, they probably have a good idea of how they want to work together for the remainder of the time. For example, they may have discovered that giving everyone a chance to speak without interruptions is important to them. These and other important group "rules." are called "norms." Suggest to the group that it would be a good idea to decide on norms together at this point.

2. If the group has difficulty thinking of norms, you might give several examples of nones that make sense in your context.

3. Ask the group to brainstorm a list of suggested norms. List on flip chart paper. Be sure to add a norm or two of your own if they are important to you.

4. Ask for clarification of any of the suggested norms that are vague or unclear.

5. Have the group decide on which of the listed norms they want to keep and the ones they want to discard. Cross out the ones they agree are unnecessary.

6. List the group morms on flip chart paper (while participants are busy with the next exercise) and post prominently in the training room for the remainder of the workshop.

Activity 7: Analysis and Evaluation of Session

Activity Time 15 minutes

Purpose

To analyze how the session was designed to be an NFE activity and to evaluate its effectiveness.

Step - by - Step

1. Let the group know the purpose of the activity (above).

2. Remind them of the activities they have just participated in (using the Activity Sequence on the first page of this session).

3.Referring to the posted definition of NFE, ask the group to comment on how the session incorporated many (but probably not all) of the points.

OPTION

As the group gives examples, write them on flip chart paper along with the NFE principles they demonstrate. This will give the group a participant-generated review of the session. Post on the wall for participants to refer to in Step 4.

Ask participants to write down at least one specific suggestion that would help make future sessions more closely approximate the definition of NFE. They could do this by completing the following sentence:

To practice NFE more effectively in this workshop, in future sessions we should.

Collect the suggestions, thank the participants, and tell them you will try to incorporate some of them into future sessions.

For Next lime

Give participants handouts (NFE in the Developing World) for reading on their own time and discussion among themselves.

Suggest that participants read Chapters 1 and 2 of the Peace Corps NFE Manual (if they have not done so previously) and Chapter 3 for the next session.

Time Saver #1

Time Saver #2

Time Saver #3

(To use when this workshop is part of other training activities after the group is already well established.)

RELATED REFERENCES (See Appendix III)

Srinivasan L. Tools for Community Participation

Vella, J. Learning To Teach.P a g e

What is NFE? - Julie's Assignment

At the end of her service, this Volunteer felt she had done some useful and satisfying NFE work. How do you see Julie ''s Peace Corps service as fitting into the posted definition of NFE?

Julie's assignment was to work with women's groups at village community centers to help them develop small business skills. For a long time it seemed to Julie that the women were uninterested in doing anything at all. Finally they approached her with a request that she start up some cooking classes for teenagers who had left school but had not yet gotten married.

Julie felt uniquely unqualified to do this, as her cooking, by her own account, was a disaster. The women laughed when Julie told them this, and began inviting her to their houses at dinner time to show her how it was done. Soon Julie was a learner alongside a few of the local teenagers, a role that she enjoyed thoroughly, though she felt it wasn't getting her any closer to finding something useful to do with her small business skills.

After four months of frustration, Julie hit upon the idea of getting women together who already owned businesses and helping them upgrade their skills in marketing and management.

Her first group consisted of only two women, one who made soap and the other who tiedyed cloth using indigo that she made from local plants. As the three of them became friends, they discovered that both of the small businesses had the same problem: lack of access to a market. However, the soap maker had thought of some clever advertising, and the tie-dyer had a way of reducing her production costs to almost zero. In their conversations they gave each other a few new ideas and came up with a plan to get free transportation to a larger town together on market day.

From this first experience, Julie discovered that when groups of local women in small business got together, they already had most of the expertise they needed among them to improve their sales and management. Slowly, her group grew by word of mouth, and then began to expand to other villages through family connections of the most active members. In group meetings, Julie stayed in the background, facilitating discussion and sharing among members, arranging for field trips that the women decided on themselves and occasionally offering advice on specific business methods.

Near the end of her service, Julie was still trying to figure out ways to get women involved who had never been in business before. Finally she called a meeting of the most active members of the group and asked them to help her understand why other women seemed so reluctant to take the first step.

As they sat together telling stories, Julie began to understand more clearly how hard it had been for these successful women to make changes in their lives in order to make their ventures work. Though the women never said so directly, Julie could hear what they were saying: that the women who remained in a more traditional role were simply not ready to take the risk. Julie returned home with new respect for the women she had gone into Peace Corps to serve-both the ones who had the courage to try something new and those who had chosen to follow centuries of tradition.

Interests/Skills Inventory

Figure

Figure

Figure

H. Skills and/or Experience

Please indicate your skills and/or experience in the following NFE.

We hope you will some of them with others during the workshop - either by helping to demonstrate a technique or facilitating part of a session of a or acting as a resource person for other participants Check all those that apply to you NFE in the Developing World

Who is Paulo Freire?

During the 1970s, Paulo Freire's name became well-known in education circles around the world. International and national development agencies sent representatives to workshops on "Freire's Method. Many who have read his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, find his style tedious and involuted while at the same time proclaiming his ideas to be exciting and long overdue. Those who have met Freire personally find him to be a serious, mild-mannered, and powerful individual.

Freire was born in the Northeast of Brazil; a region known for its widespread poverty. In 1932, at age eleven, he made a vow to dedicate his life to the struggle against hunger, so that other children would not have to know the agony he was then experiencing. Although he was from a middle-class family, the worldwide depression of the '30s cast his lot with the poor of Recife. By 1959, Freire had completed a doctoral dissertation at the University of Recife on his philosophy of education. Seventy days after the right-wing military coup of 1964, he was expelled from Brazil.

Freire's expulsion was partly the result of a successful literacy campaign that had been mounted in Recife and the surrounding regions. Known as concientizacoo, Freire's literacy method proved to do more than teach people to read and write. For the first time, hope for a new future and belief in its possibility had become part of the curriculum for the poor.

From Brazil, Freire went to Chile where he worked five years with UNESCO and the Chilean Land Reform Institute. In 1969 he was at Harvard as a consultant, and then went to Geneva with the Office of Education of the World Council of Churches. In the 1980s, after political changes in Brazil, he was welcomed home and appointed Minister of Education.

Adapted form Concientizacao and Simulation Games, by William Smith, Amherst, MA: Canter for International Education

What is Freire's method of practicing NFE?

Freire's process developed out of his work with rural peasants in Brazil, as a means by which the "oppressed, could begin to confront their "oppressors" through developing social awareness and taking action. To begin the process, an educator spends time with the people, to analyze their situation and identify important themes such as "unemployment," "slums," or "water." Next the educator "encodes." these themes in a visual form, usually a picture, which is presented to a group of people (called a "culture circler) to "decode." In this stage, the educator asks a number of questions, generally in this sequence:

What is the problem? Who are the people? What are they thinking? Feeling? Wanting? How should things be in this situation? Why are things this way? Who or what is to blame? What can we do about it?

When participants take action, the action itself becomes the next "code" for them to analyze. So, the process continues in a cyclical fashion. (If literacy is also a goal, participants

NFE in the Developing World - continued learn words and sentences they derive &fom their discussion of the picture.) (See Helping Health Workers Learn, pp. 26-21 and 26-27 for examples of how this process works in the field.)

Thus, in Freire's process, actual life experiences become the teacher, and the culture circle serves as a support and analysis group for people to work toward more just structures themselves. Freire highlights the critical role of the facilitator in this process in a beautifully written memo "To The Coordinator of the Culture Circle"

In order to be able to be a good coordinator for a "culture circle you need, above all, to have faith in man, to believe in his possibility to create, to change things. You need to love. You must be convinced that the fundamental effort of education is the liberation of man, and never his domestication. You must be convinced that this liberation takes place to the extent that man reflects upon himself in relationship to the world in which, and with which, he lives.A culture cirek is a live and creative dialogue, in which everyone knows some things and does not know others, in which all seek, together, to know more. This is why you, as the coordinator of a culture circle, must be humble, so that you can grow with the group, instead of losing your humility and claiming to direct the group, once it is animated

[P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppresses 1972. From Noncomformal Education as an
Empowering Process by Suzanne Kindervatter, Amherst MA: Canter for international
Education 19791]

Who is Lyra Srinivasan?

Lyra Snnivasan was born in Goa, India and is a graduate of Bombay University, where she received degrees in English Literature and Secondary Education Teaching. She went on to receive both a master's degree in curriculum development and a doctorate in adult education from Harvard university.

She has over twenty years of experience in participatory training for development and community education within the United Nations system, and as a independent consultant. She has conducted training workshops for trainers, program planners, curriculum designers, supervisors and field staff in a number of countries including Costa Rica, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States.

Prom 1984-1988 Ms. Srinivasan served as Training Director of Prowwess/UNDP. "Prowwess stands for "Promotion of the Role of Women in Water and Environmental Sanitation Services. It focuses on women, in the context of their communities, because they are the main collectors and users of water and guardians of household hygiene and family health. In the past, even field projects with a community participation focus have often neglected to involve women in decision-making, for lack of knowledge about their role or difficultiies in reaching them.

The Prowwess program was created in 1983 to demonstrate how women can be involved, the benefits this will bring to women and their communities, and how this experience can be replicated. Experience so far in around twenty country projects in Africa, the Arab States, and Latin America shows that early and wide participation by women and their communities pays off in better maintenance, higher cost recoveries, improved hygienic practices and other socioeconomic gains for the community as a whole.

[From Perspectives an Nonformal Adult Learning by Lyra Srinivasan NY: World
Education, 1977 And Tools for Community Participation by Lyra Srinivasan. NY: Prowwess/UNDP,
1990]

NFE in the Developing World - continued

What is Srinivasan's way of practicing NFE?

Lyra Srinivasan is the initiator of the SARAR approach, which she describes as having five characteristics:

Self-Esteem: The self-esteem of groups and individuals is acknowledged and enhanced by recognizing that they have the creative and analytic capacity to identify and solve their own problems.

Associative Strengths: The methodology recognizes that when people form groups, they become stronger and develop the capacity to act together.

Resourcefulness: Each individual is a potential resource to the community. The method seeks to develop the resourcefulness and creativity of groups and individuals in seeking solutions to problems.

Action Planning: Planning for action to solve problems is central to the method. Change can be achieved only if groups plan and carry out appropriate actions.

Responsibility: The responsibility for follow-through is taken over by the group. Actions that are planned must be carried out. Only through such responsible participation do results become meaningful.

Srinivasan believes that participatory training for water and sanitation projects cannot take place in isolation, for training programs exist within a project context that involves many other people-Ministry staff, social workers, engineers and other scientists, and representatives of donor agencies-who affect the project outcomes. All these people must become familiar with the goals of participatory training if the project is to succeed and be sustained. In addition to training many types of professionals, training should also involve people who have different levels of authority and responsibility, such as trainers, extension agents and village volunteers.

Much of participatory training involves radically changing the traditional relationship between those who have the prestigious role of teacher or specialist with all the answers, and those who, being largely unschooled, perhaps illiterate, are assigned the passive role of recipients of instruction.

Some technical specialists and project staff in positions of control may not take too kindly to local people proposing alternative solutions or expressing reservations concerning their plan of action. As one project director put it, "I don't like being questioned. When I am questioned it lessens my authority.

But in the learner-centered approach, trainers acknowledge and respect the fact that learners, too, have expertise and talents of their own which must be given scope for expression. Only then can they truly function as partners in development.

Participatory training is two-way training, a partnership between the trainer and trainees, by which people discover their own strengths, develop problem-solving skills and together play a more effective role in managing their environment.

NFE in the Developing World - continued

Training involves field visits to try out the new participatory techniques that participants have been learning. In Nepal, one of these visits was described this way:

We were the first to arrive at the meeting place. About 30 women gathered within the half hour. The village volunteer and an agency trainer welcomed the women and briefly described the purpose of the visits. The volunteer then put in the middle of the circle of women the picture of the baby with diarrhoea, a problem the villagers had selected as a priority on our previous visit. She then passed out pictures of the causes of diarrhoea and asked the women if they could identify any factors in the pictures that caused the disease.

Slowly women began to exchange pictures and to discuss links between the pictures and the disease. One or two older women in the group were knowledgeable and gave the other women good information. The following exchange was typical: One woman looted at a picture of a woman washing in a stream where animals were immersing themselves in the water. She said, "This water is dirty and using it causes sickness. Another woman took the picture from her hand and said, "Why is this water dirty? It looks clean to me.

The first woman then explained that the animals were dirty, defecated in the water, had diseases and parasites, etc. The second woman nodded and said, "Oh, I see, that is dirty water.

Next the volunteer gave the group the set of pictures of prevention strategies. She asked them if they could match causes and preventions. Again women began to decode the pictures and try different matches. During the lively discussion, the trainers kept quiet. When matching had been completed the women selected one of their group members to explain their choices. She moved back and forth describing causes and preventative measures, sometimes receiving help from her companions. Everyone enjoyed the exercise and participated actively.

[Adapted from Tools For Community Participation by Lyra Srinivasan New York: 1990]

Who is W.P. Napitupulu?

Washington P. Napitupulu is the Director General of Nonformal Education, Youth and Sports; Ministry of Education and Culture in the Republic of Indonesia. He has written books on education (in particular on literacy in Indonesia) and psychology, and many articles on the development of youth resources and rural education. Dr. Napitupulu is also the author of "Paket A, a series of 100 booklets that are roughly equivalent to the country's primary school curriculum. They arc all written in the national language, Bahasa Indonesia, and are designed to be the standard text used by a mass audience of hundreds of thousands of unschooled adults and primary school dropouts of all ages.

NFE in the Developing World - continued

What was the NFE method used in developing ""Paket A"?

Because of the great diversity of language, experience, circumstances and habitat of the Indonesian participants in the nation-wide basic education program, Dr. Napitupulu and other high level officials felt there was a strong need for a standard, core curriculum developed around common needs. They felt that a standard, multi-unit curriculum and text should be written in the national language and should teach Indonesian principles of citizenship and morality along with more standard literacy and numeracy topics. It was felt that a stable curriculum would help give this unwieldy project a sense of common purpose. Dr. Napitupulu says:

Paket A is a collection of minimum learning materials covering all spheres of life, which should be mastered by every illiterate and primary school drop-out in order that they become well-informed, responsible and productive Indonesian citizens. PacJcet A will assist the learners to become a complete lndonesian with Pancasila morals (the five cardinal values that guide the behavior of all Indonesians).

As the impetus for a common purpose could only come from the national level, the list of topics and broad outlines for the booklets were determined by fairly high ranking officials. The participation of these officials is both a blessing and a problem for the Paket A Programs. It is a benefit because without their participation it is unlikely that the series would have even been designed, tested, revised and mass-produced. Their participation is a problem because their prestige and rank makes it difficult to revise the program even when its field performance demonstrates the need for revision.

Paket A was developed for a general audience of learners around problems and interest areas which national level officials felt were common. The first 10 booklets in the Paket A series serve as a graduated literacy and numeracy primer rounded out with some bits on health, family planning, agriculture and other topics. Dr. Napitupulu says,

It has often been argued that learning processes must suit learning needs. No one objects to this general statement. One does feel uneasy, however, on going further to say that the learning materials must suit the specific local needs of the illiterates. Are the needs of the learners confined only to the specific community in which they live? Are their needs really so specific that they do not resemble those of other human communities? One might go even further by saying, are they quite a different breed of human beings than those in other communities? Very heated discussion can arise over this point: local versus national, particular versus general or universal; but reality repeatedly tells us that it is not a guest ion of either - or, but a continuum. Therefore, in developing a curriculum, especially the contents of learning materials, there must be a balance between the areas of specific local needs and areas of national core content derived from national goals and common problems.

NFE in the Developing World - continued

Who are the teachers in the nation-wide literacy program?

Dr. Napitupulu says:

Nonformal education programs in Indonesia are directed towards creating a new atmosphere which makes it possible for every educated person to be called upon as a volunteer to help fellow human beings with less or no education, both in the new illiteracy eradication program as well as in other nonformal educational programs. We now propose that each educated person helps ten persons, and each one in turn helps ten more, and so on.

There are more than 200 learning centers in Indonesia that train the monitors and tutors of learning groups.

In order to cover the first twenty booklets in Paket A, the learner works with the tutor to master 1500 basic Indonesian words commonly used in daily activities. After mastering these 1500 words, a learner can communicate in Bahasa Indonesia and can study A-2 1 through A-100 by himself or herself. In 1990, more than 150 million books of Paket A were being studied by learning groups.

Why is literacy a priority in Indonesia?

Dr. Napitupulu quotes the Minister of Education and Culture of Indonesia, Fuad Hassan, as saying:

While science and technology now have successfully opened new vistas and solved some mysteries of life, there arc still groups of people who are not able to appreciate the progress of modern life simply because of their illiteracy. Modern life deals increasingly with environments through alphabets and numbers: various guides, signs, symbols and other messages are expressed in the form of writting, as arc sources of knowledge and information circulating in society. In short, an illiterate will certainly feel aware of his under-development and therefore his inability to share in the benefits and progress of modern life.

[Adapted from Literacy v' Indonesia A key to modern life by Washington P. Napitupulu.
UNESCO International Bureau of Education, 1990 And Indonesia Implementation of a
-scale NFE project. Amherst MA: Center for International Education, 1982]