Education as Social Justice
FE Y ALEGRÍA. BOLIVIA.
At 14,000 feet above sea level the light is different. It is brighter, clearer, warmer, more intense, yet also more welcoming than the light those of us who live closer to sea level are accustomed to. The less atmosphere between you and the sun the more direct your connection to the light source, and with thinner air there ends up being less between you and your subject. El Alto is a wonderful place for taking photographs.
But it is not just the lack of atmosphere that shapes these photographs, it is also the energy of the schools supplied by the students, teachers, and parents. From the kids hanging out on a bench between classes, to the instructors interacting with their students, it was abundantly clear that the school was a valued part of the community.
Community was central to all of the Fe y Alegría schools we visited. Rather than treat education as a way to memorize information or take tests, in the schools we saw, Fe y Alegría was carrying out education for a larger purpose. Whether that student was a five year old learning basic math or a returning adult student learning skills to pursue a better job, the schools were structured in a way to ask, “How can we do what is best for the whole student? How can we best serve the community?” Fe y Alegría schools often take as their mission to serve the poorest parts of society, seeing education as a means to improving life chances, while also recognizing that poverty itself is a serious barrier to education that requires extra steps to overcome. Education as pursuit of social justice.
These photographs capture various moments of education at Fe y Alegría schools. From the formally structured moments like music practice, and instructors working one on one with adult learners, to the informal moments between classes, or the parent on mother’s day, what we saw, and I hope to capture in these photographs was not just the importance of education to these communities but also a way of treating education that isn’t instrumentalist, focused on just getting you to the next step in life, but one that thinks carefully about what it means to help people develop and communities to thrive.
