One of the films of the 11th edition of PLANETE+ DOC FILM FESTIVAL, which took place in Warsaw, Wroclaw and 20 venues in Poland between the 9th and 18th of May, was Alphabet by the director Erwin Wagenhofer.
Wagenhofer is an Austrian freelance filmmaker and writer and it’s known for addressing controversial topics in his movies, being
Alphabet the third movie in his documentary trilogy on the current state of economic affairs. His 2005 film We Feed The World explored the origins of mass produced food; Let’s Make Money (2008) investigated the development and elitism in the global financial system; and 2013’s Alphabet looks at how education determines how we perceive the world and our role in it.This documentary, rather than a critique to schools, wants to call attention to the way we bring our children into this world and how the education system, killing their creativity and imagination, deprives them the opportunity to grow in a happy and healthy way and to develop their full human potential.
The film begins by showing the lives of students in a school in China. Here, one can witness what is perhaps the educational system that most promotes competition and quantitative results. We can follow a young boy’s daily life and be faced with the hard reality that there is no place or space for these children to live and to be exactly what they are: children. Chinese schools promote the market-thinking of the school system and ‘study hard’ is the motto not only in school but also at home; there is a lot of pressure to be the best and the recognition and validation from one’s family is measured by the medals and schools prizes. So, not only are these kids being brought up to be highly skilled, equipped and competitive robots to frame the capitalist system of society but also getting the message, at school and at home, that emotions, dreams, imagination, creativity and playing have no meaning or importance in one’s life if, of course, one wants to ‘be somebody’. Their childhood is stolen in order to make them emotionally unstable and unhappy adults.
It is also documented on the movie, some longitudinal investigations and studies that confirm that people lose their capacity for “divergent thinking” over time because of standardized education. With the multiple choice questions and the modern teaching method, we are told that there is only one possible answer, we are not encourage to investigate or to have divergent-thinking neither is our curiosity or creativity incited, leaving us with no idea of what we want and what we are actually capable of doing. And, not only is the system designed to make us all equal, like sheep in a herd, but also leaves behind anyone who is deemed inadequate, like Pablo Pineda - the first student with Down syndrome to graduate from university – and a young German security guard - who (according to society parameters) didn’t succeed and is routed into dead-end jobs feeling completely outcasted from society – both portrayed in the documentary.
On the other hand, we can see successful stories of people who haven’t been brought up inside the educational school system and whose lives were guided by non-formal education methods. We can hear the teachings of German brain researcher Gerald Hüther and the French creative educator Arno Stern, who defend that playing is the best way to learn. They show how we systematically destroy the capacity of imagination in our children and in ourselves because of this social and economic system where everyone is fighting against everyone, propelled by the fundamentals of hard work, competition and performance, imposed by this same system.
The teaching through non-formal education gives you the space and the time to find out what is your talent, what you’re good at, and gives you the opportunity to develop those skills. At the same time, not only does not neglect the emotional and most intrinsic aspects of your self-development but it’s actually a very important tool in one’s establishment as a social being belonging in to a society.
It is known that people do things best when they do the things they love. It is also known that great inventions and discoveries come from playing, from investigating, from trial and error, and all these propelled by creative thinking. So why do we keep this the capitalist agenda of modern education squelching our children's capacity for imagination, creativity and independent thought?
Like Erwin Wagenhofer says: “we’re like spring flowers; if we have the right conditions, we can bloom”.
Catarina Amaral
