This is a post that I wrote up during my first semester, while taking Relationality, Creative Practice and Education. Ever since then this post has been wandering the back alleys of my mind and the drafts here, waiting to be published.

This course asked us to design an education intervention – and so I did.

The intervention is situated in the Pakistani context and it is directed towards rectifying some of the issues regarding social justice, gender discrimination and inequal distribution of wealth. In the case of Pakistan the most put upon faction of society is the modern peasantry for they are condemned to die in the same vicious cycle of poverty that they were born in. Such is the tragedy of Pakistan.

These people work 12 hrs a day as maids, janitors, security guards, construction labour and  so on only to make little more than 20 dollars a month – it is no wonder then that Punjab is looking to drug abuse as a form of escape.

What this menial labour does is by its very demanding nature and low return is that it forces these workers to live in a constant state of survival. They will never know the ease of running water, the crunch of a McCrispy or the satisfaction of a full stomach. The worst crime however is that their existence is one devoid of humanity.

They have no time to feel human, to share ideas – for they spend their days shining the boots of other brown men who pose as the new colonial masters, prancing around in fancy cars, speaking English and looking down on anything ‘desi’ or local. It is here then that humanity and identity must be reclaimed.

If a laundromat were to be established in one such community wherein the laundromat exists as a functioning business during the day but by night it transforms into a meeting place where maids of that area can bring their own laundry to launder for free and thus provide them a rationale for attendance while allowing for an exchange of ideas, of conversation. There would be tea and biscuits provided.

The crux of this idea is that education is an act of doing or making (Stoller, 2014) as defined by the concept of Bildung and thus rather than focusing on an acquisition of facts a better strategy is to highlight the construction of self in a way that is ultimately transformational.

This particular segment of the population has no recompense from the cruelty of daily life, they do not get to socialise and they most certainly are afforded no chance at sharing their ideas about the very country that they inhabit. That is a deep lack which is reinforced as not only a lack of voice but a lack of agency. It is also very telling about how much these citizens are valued, or not valued. Going forward as a nation that is inclusive and leaves no one behind it is important to design interventions that empower all citizens especially those who have been subject to systemic oppression.

Bildung disrupts a view of education which holds that knowledge is an object which is statically preserved and cognitively transmitted. Instead, it begins with the idea that knowledge is interdependent with and generated out of unique human contexts and experiences. (Stoller 2014)

It is then the aim of this intervention to provide these people a sense of self, a voice and to reassure them that their is inherent value in their lived experiences as well. That their voices matter and they are part of a national narrative that is greater than any one faction of society. Only when they find their voices can the courage to exercise their rights and voice their concerns be exercised. And perhaps it is only then that real lasting change can occur.

References

Stoller, A 2014, Knowing and Learning As Creative Action: a Reexamination of the Epistemological Foundations of Education, Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [1 March 2025].

Airing Dirty Laundry / Zainab Abbas / Knowledge Integration and Project Planning: Education Futures (2023-24) by is licensed under a