The following is a presentation given by Mireille Fanon Mendes France at the World Education Forum- Palestine, on 30 October 2010 in Bethlehem. Fanon Mendes France is from the Frantz Fanon Foundation and the French Jewish Union for Peace.
Education must be a strategic weapon of resistance to oppression and the most effective way to ensure liberation for emancipation, because without education there is much risk of alienation, in the wider sense as explicated by Frantz Fanon, i.e. it is nourished by the cultural lag desired and organized by the forces that have an interest in the pursuit of domination.
The education expected in the current context is that of resignation, while education should be built on the linking of thoughts, and especially taking the risk of thinking and not fearing the being "on a line of witches," as Gilles Deleuze said.
That’s what had been understood by those who fought through armed and political resistance during liberation struggles; they made education of the populations one of the most important priorities. From Vietnam to Algeria, literacy and education have generally been very quickly recognized as a founding dimension of resistance to oppression. Read more...